


Rattle your chains if you love being free

by meinposhbastard



Series: 2019 tropes fic challenge [3]
Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, BAMF!Peter, BAMF!wade, Blanket Permission, Discworld Reference, Greek mythological creature mention, Happy Ending, Identity Reveal, Inspired by Shrek (Movies), Legend of Zelda: BOTW characters, Light Angst, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pining, Pirates of the Caribbean reference, Resolved UST, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Spiderverse Big Bang 2019, Star Trek reference, Tolkien character mention, UST, Wee Free Women, alternatively:, dark!Peter, established MJ/Harry, the archive warning doesn't happen between main FYI
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-08-14 08:01:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 63,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20188951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meinposhbastard/pseuds/meinposhbastard
Summary: When Peter is sent to rescue Wade, the cursed prince guarded by a voracious dragon, he didn't expect things to become so complicated. Cue a meddling goblin, an eccentric wizard, not-so-extinct gnomes, and two strangers from another universe. A simple quest turns into a journey, and a reluctant Peter finds himself neck-deep in a whirlwind of feelings, most, if not all, the fault of a certain prince.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the Spiderverse Big Bang 2019, I have finally reached the finish line (well almost).
> 
> This has been in the making since... March. It suffered a second complete re-writing which saw the end line a week and a half ago. FYI the first draft was around 20k, and only about 5% of that initial draft has made it into this one (3% is just the first scene with Peter's aunt and uncle). Now it's at over 63k.
> 
> All the kudos to my amazing betas, ohstars and TheSortingHat for being patient and brilliant with their suggestions and sticking with me through the end.
> 
> A huge kudo to my artist, ChairKickerJoker for the amazing cover they did for this fic! You can find it on pillowfort [here](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/831783/).
> 
> And least, but not last, thank you to spaceboundwitch on Discord for helping with the summary (my brain is mush after editing more or less 50k in one go), you're a life-saver!
> 
> So buckle up, lovelies! I'll post a chapter a day until Friday.
> 
> P.S. This is the 'verse where Peter knows that people can identify as other pronouns than what his eyes see, but has no clue what lava is.  
P.P.S. The title comes from Hozier - Nina Cried Power (the song has nothing to do with the fic, though)

* * *

***

He takes off the kettle from the old iron stove before a yawn makes his jaw crack on one side. The kettle is new, brought over by his aunt and uncle, currently sleeping in his bedroom. His spine cracks as well when he stretches to one side and then the other one; his two-people, makeshift couch (of wicker no less) did _ wonders _ for setting his spine askew. He couldn’t have done the job better himself.

That or the goblins he fought last night.

“My dear boy,” Aunt May says as she stops in the doorway to the common room; he pours green tea into three wooden mugs. “I really wish you’d reconsider.”

Peter sighs because they’ve been at it the whole previous evening and nothing, not even seven hours spent on his _ terrific _couch, will make him change his mind.

“Morning to you, too, Aunt May. We’ve been over it already. I’m fine here.”

“But you’re in the middle of the woods! What if you’re attacked by thieves or dishonorable people?”

He smiles — if only she knew, she’d pack him up and take him back to their house in a snap. Ignorance is bliss, as MJ uses to say whenever Harry is too slow on the uptake. He picks up two of the three mugs and hands her one just so that he can kiss her forehead.

No matter how much they argue, his Aunt is still his Aunt. The only person who has been a constant in his life alongside his Uncle. He’d lay down his life for them without a second thought. He did— when evil faeries attacked their home. He had been only eight and he had died for it.

“I’ve lived here for the past six years, Aunt, and nothing exciting happened in these woods, apart from the seasonal boar migration.” His eyes narrow at something behind her ear. “They always trampel my little garden for some reason.”

“But this is not a good place for you, my boy!” she continues, and if it wasn’t for the mug she cradles between her hands, she’d have gesticulated a lot like she always does when something annoys her.

“It’s my parents’ house. By law I own this plot and this house. I won’t leave it to that self-proclaimed lord.” That has her press her lips together. “Morning Uncle Ben,” he says, extending the other mug behind her as his uncle approaches slowly, still rubbing away the sleep from his eyes.

“Ben! Tell him that he should come with us!”

“May, we’ve had this discussion already. He doesn’t want to. He’s big enough to make his own decisions now.”

“Thank you!” He lifts his own mug at his uncle in approval, then takes a sip, burning the tip of his tongue in the process. He scrunches up his nose as he exhales fast through his open mouth to cool it off.

“Ben!” 

If there’s one thing Peter’s sure of is where he got his stubbornness from.

“Sweetheart, please,” Ben says in that tone of voice that’s teetering on the edge of being cross, but not quite there. “He knows he’s welcome at our place whenever he wants to come. But if he’s happy here, then let him have his happiness.”

She exhales sharply, the way she does when Ben doesn’t agree with or backs her up.

“Besides, I’m two hours away from the nearest village.” Or an hour if he cuts it through the forest and doesn’t follow the beaten path down the hill. 

“But almost a day away from us,” she presses. 

“I’ll be fine, Aunt May.” No. He still won’t budge.

“Promise you’ll visit us next week.”

“I promise.” He pauses, then, “as long as work doesn’t pile up.” He motions to the pile behind the wicker couch made of guard plates and bits of armor he still needs to work on.

Another sigh. “Fine, you stubborn boy. Do as you please. I’m only worried about the ghosts that come with this house.”

“What ghosts? I don’t even remember their faces. The only thing I have of them is my seven year old drawing and everybody knows that there’s not a single artistic bone in this family.” Ben lifts his mug in silent agreement and the corner of Peter’s mouth quirks up for a fraction of a second.

She sighs again and shakes her head in defeat before she goes outside.

They leave after breakfast, Peter waving at them from the open door until they disappear behind the thick foliage. He stretches his arms up, enjoying the cool breeze and the smell of spring. Gwen is allergic to any kind of pollen, so Peter took it upon himself to enjoy spring twice as much for her sake. Not that she appreciates the lengths he goes to for her, but then again nobody said that Peter doesn’t know how to tease his friends. 

He grins at the family of hares leaping and playing at the edge of his meadow. 

Until that sense that alerts him of dangers about to happen flares to life and his whole body locks in anticipation.

A familiar battle cry comes from his left and he takes in this nasty-looking goblin, swamp lycheen green and a face wrinkled not by age but by nature and birth, jumping from a bush intent on catching the biggest hare. They disperse fast and he only lands on his face. 

Peter shakes his head and approaches him. Even to this day he’s not sure if those brown clothes have seen shinier days. At least he knows that the maroon vest is made of leather, although he hasn’t figured out what animal it comes from. 

“Still harassing the inhabitants of this forest, Razor Face?”

“My name is Green Goblin,” he says, his voice pitched high, but still sounding like the sounds are straining to pass through very narrow passages, bumping and dragging, “you nasty human-arachnid! Great Green Goblin for you!”

“Again with the alliteration. What’s so evil about that? Razor Face sounds more dangerous. Besides it captures you perfectly.” He tries not to let the laughter that’s bubbling up from trickling into his voice, but it’s difficult.

“I was the greatest goblin this side of the kingdom!” He jumps up and shakes his fist at Peter, long claws flat against his palm. He wouldn’t be able to punch someone without breaking his fingers, but that’s why he uses a rusty jagged knife instead.

He’s always been the stabbing kind of goblin. Backstabbing, if he can get away with it.

Peter lifts an eyebrow, his arms crossed, sucking in his lips to not smile— too much. “That’s why you were exiled from your underground ‘kingdom’,” he says, putting the air quotes.

Razor Face growls as he hurls himself towards Peter— and lands on his shin. Peter watches in genuine amusement as the barely knee-high goblin climbs his leg. But when he reaches Peter’s hip he can’t keep it in anymore and he starts squirming and laughing until he dislodges the goblin, making him land on his ass.

“You repugnant, backstabbing serpent!” he roars, his face contorted in a truly hideous fashion. The big mouth full of razor-sharp teeth, parting his face like a knife wound, and the dark red eyes do no help at all. 

“Spider, you mean.”

“Serpent! You foiled my plans!”

“Still hang up on that? It’s been months since then.” And then, because he cannot help himself twisting the metaphorical knife, “besides, you were the one who spilled the beans when I crash-landed on you.”

“You were suffocating me, you hairless bug-brained worm! My plan was perfect! I was so close to kill that spineless spit-eating vermin of our king.”

“That’s not a nice thing to say,” Peter comments and Razor Face grins in satisfaction, “I was a serpent up until now.”

_ “Die!” _

Not this time either. Peter jumps back to avoid a foul-smelling goblin from climbing him like a tree again. They do this cat and mouse play for several minutes until the goblin stops chasing him, breathing hard. They’ve always been better at close-range combat; they can chase their prey for _ so long _until they tire and give up. A shrill trumpet joins the birds’ songs and the goblin’s large, pointy ears jolt.

“I’ll be back, serpent!” he calls out as he hurries towards the west part of the meadow.

“I’ll bring snacks next time!” Peter cups one hand at his mouth as he raises his voice.

He sighs in satisfaction. Good, morning exercises done. Now there’s only the trip to the village he kept postponing. He really has a hankering for stew and cheese tonight, and those ingredients he can’t get from the forest alone.

He returns to his little cottage, glancing to the side where his little garden lies, a waist-high fence covered in greenery. Inside his house, he fills his pouch with devices he’s been working on to barter for the ingredients he needs, then takes his black leather mask.

Black Spider they call him. He hopes he won’t be needing to fight anybody today because it’s hot enough outside that he’s gonna sweat buckets with this on. Granted, it only covers his face with two holes for the eyes and two holes for his mouth and nose, that he ties at the back of his head. It’s the most sturdy material he could afford. He tried making a mask from old clothes but the cotton breaks easily, not to mention that the light color seems to be a magnet to dirt.

Leather is easier to clean.

He rolls it and puts it in his pouch then takes the wrist bands, again made of leather, the strings criss-crossing on the inside of his wrist to cover the mechanism made of an alloy he found in his father’s coffer. It channels the viscous, strong substance that he secrets from his wrists.

One of the few side-effects of dying at the wand of an evil faery and being brought back by the wand of a good one. 

***

He accepts the jug of milk from the rosy-cheeked lady, the last ingredient he came for, as she prattles on about how necessary it is to eat heartily. She’s a mother hen, all right. Ever since her son moved to the castle to be of service to the snivelling weasel whose grubby hands try to reach farther and farther, she’s been laying her motherly concerns all over Peter.

“Oh dearie,” she changes tone of voice after she finishes filling Peter’s jug with milk, as if it’s the first time she sees him, “aren’t you hot in this weather with those wrist contraptions and the cotton shirt?”

“Wrist bands,” he mutters before he smiles pleasantly and says, “nah, I’m fine. It’s not that hot for me.”

“Well, I say, being as scrawny as you are no wonder you’re cold. Are you eating enough? You’re not skipping meals, are you? You’re still growing, dearie. A boy like you should eat four meals a day to grow strong and sturdy like my brave boy.”

His eye twitches, thinking that he could lift her whole house with her on top of it if he so wanted to. His tongue itches to voice that thought.

“I’m stronger than I look, ma’am,” he says instead.

She assesses him like a mother would assess her child before letting him out of the house.

“You look like a stiff wind could blow you over.”

“I’m telling you—”

“If my boy were here he’d have told you how to put on muscles.”

“Muscles and fat are not the same thing,” Peter mutters.

“After all, you need those to stand up to people like that fellah, Black Spider. In his last letter, my boy told me all about how he fought that fellah.”

Load of bull. He stays away from the castle as much as he can— unless fights bring him close to it. Well, not that the soldiers stay away from _ him, _Peter of the Parker cottage, because they always need adjustments to their armor. He’s pretty famous among them, if he can say so himself. 

“He escaped, obviously,” she continues. “He has no spine like my boy. Own up to your actions, is what I always told my boy.”

That boy of her is full of air, is what Peter would love to tell this lady, but no matter her crass comments about his weight, she means well. He knows. But good lord does he find it difficult to not tell her the whole truth.

“Morning, Marge,” a large man greets, stopping by her stand at the little marketplace.

“Morning, Borg, how’s Gail?”

“She’s better. Bout of nasty stomach flu she got.”

“That’s what you get if you drink from that well down the creek,” Marge says, hands on her large hips.

“Told her that.”

“Uh,” Peter butts in. “I don’t think it’s the well’s water that’s the problem.”

“What say you it is then?” the man asks.

Well, schnaps. Now he’s either telling them the truth or blaming something else.

“Faeries, sir.” So the truth it is.

“Pah!” He chortles, his chubby fists making indents in his hips. “Those buggers have nothing to do here. They’ve been driven at the edge of the forest by our lord.”

His left eye twitches. “Actually, that’s all Spider-Man’s doing, sir.”

“Spider-who? Who is this fellah?”

He almost bites his tongue. He so does not want to say that stupid name they gave him.

“Black Spider,” he mutters.

Another chortle. “That good-for-nothing fellah that only shows himself during the night to scare the heebie-jeebies outta these hard-working people?”

And during the day, but never near villages.

Marge huffs. “Next you know he’s gonna demand we pay him tribute for what he’s done for us.”

“We never asked him to do anything for us. We’re fine on our own. Our lord protects us.”

Peter opens his mouth to argue because that lord of theirs is scheming to bite more than he can chew when a loud sneeze makes him jolt and turn at once.

“Margie, dad sent me for some parcel or other,” Gwen says, her voice nasal, looking as if her face is ready to fall off. “He said Doug brought it this morning,” she continues, ignoring Peter even though he smiles and waves at her.

“Oh dearie, yes. I brought it with me, actually. Here you go.”

She takes a bundle of brown leather held together by a thumb-thick string and hooks it carelessly under an arm before she leaves. Peter follows her, after saying his goodbyes to Marge and Borg. 

“So,” he begins as smooth as a bluff eroding, the huge grin giving away his game.

She puts up a warning finger without even looking at him. “If you’re about to say something stupid that involves my allergy, I’m gonna end you.”

Peter makes a mock-hurt face as he places a hand over his chest. “I was gonna ask about your well-being.”

“I’m a dead woman walking, what more do you want to know?”

He doesn’t answer for a while, simply keeping her company as her house comes into sight.

“Are you sure you’re okay to be out at this time of the day?”

She groans. “I don’t have a choice. Had to meet with Henry and MJ and do this errand for dad.”

“What? They already came back from their honeymoon?”

She rolls her eyes. “Duh, you dollophead. Didn’t they say that they’d be back the second week of spring?”

“Wow, time sure flies. I should pay them a visit.”

“Not if you want to see their honeymoon in real time.”

Peter huffs. “They didn’t get it out of their system?”

“As if. After all the sexual tension pre-dating their honeymoon, d’you think they’d be done with it so soon? Come talk to me in a handful of years.” She turns a suspicious look towards him. “Right. Speaking of time. Where have you been the past two weeks?”

“What do you mean? I’ve been here.”

“No.” A sneak round of no less than seven sneezes interrupts her. She looks worse for the wear afterwards. “Not here-here,” she continues, sniffling. “Did you hole up in that hut of yours again to work on your crazy trinkets?”

Peter’s lower lip pushes forward, readjusting his satchel full of his provisions. “They’re devices, not trinkets. They help make life easier. And I don’t live in a hut. It’s a cottage! Cottage.” She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling a bit, so Peter breathes more easily. “But I didn’t stay there. I—” No, saying that he fought goblins south of the village because he intercepted them on his usual patrols wouldn’t do him any good.

Nor the fact that he had to nurse some terrible wounds afterwards. Nasty, smelly creatures know how to climb. And how to cut. 

“You?” she prompts, then she stops and faces Peter as they’re already in front of her house.

Peter bites his lip. “Okay, fine. You win. I was holed up in my cottage the whole time.”

Her suspicious look doesn’t lessen, but after an excruciatingly long time of intense scrutiny she shakes her head and heads inside.

“Anyway, “ he says as she’s about to enter, “you might ah-choose to stay insi—” 

He doesn’t finish the sentence as a pebble skims his biceps, his reflexes saving him in the nick of time.

“Whoa! That almost took out my arm!”

“Very funny Peter,” she gripes from inside, her allergy making her be in a bad mood almost constantly, and Peter salutes before turning around and heading back home.

***

He pats his stomach, frowning at it as he pulls back his shirt to see the small bulge that his full stomach makes. Even if he wants to, he can’t get fatter than this. He put it on his powers, another side-effect of being brought back to life by ways of faery magic.

But there’s nothing he can do about it. He actually eats four times a day and he still has to see the results of his hearty meals.

He shakes his head and leaves the body assessments for another day. There’s a garden that needs tending to if he wants to eat fresh veggies during the summer. It takes him the whole day to take the weeds out and water the seeds he put in neat rows. All the while, his mind is working on the particulars of a self-watering system. The water might be a problem since it’s pretty far away from his house, but he doesn’t worry about that right now.

He’s rinsing the dirt off his arms and face in the wood-carved bowl on the rickety table that’s situated in the kitchen when his danger sense comes alive. But nothing moves around his house. The surrounding area is eerily quiet.

Then a roar breaks the silence and he’s out of his house and climbing the nearby tree faster than he can draw in a full breath, his bone spider legs sprouting from his back and helping him reach the treetop in two blinks of an eye.

His vision, when he transforms like this, is better. He’s aware that his eyes multiply, but he’s never seen himself more clearly than reflected in water.

As he focuses north-east, he picks up the heavy plumes of smoke coming from the castle and then— 

“What the—”

He can’t believe what his three pairs of eyes see. A fully formed, fully into destructive mode Balrog appeared. For the record, it’s not a weekly thing. Nor monthly or yearly. This is a once in a lifetime occurrence. At least for Peter. He can’t account for the lives of others.

“What d’you think, serpent?” The high-pitched voice of the familiar goblin comes from below, a hideous smile on his face. “Do you fear my power now?”

Peter blinks down at the midget, then at the beast attacking the settlements around the castle with its scorching tail and ferocious claws. Without thinking, he crawls down the trunk of the tree, stopping just below the branches. His upside down body is held up by the bone legs and his own limbs.

“What did you do?”

The sneer fills with malice. “I bind Balrog to me. Now he responds to me only. I’m his only master. Tremble before me, serp—”

He crawls more, before stopping abruptly as he pushes himself forward so that he’s right above the goblin’s head, his face muscles shifting and contorting into something Peter’s never felt before.

“So the beast will disappear ** _if I kill you."_**His voice changes in the middle of the sentence, becoming thick and rough.

There’s a foreign feeling fueling him right now, something that’s vicious and brutal and pushing away Peter’s logic. He feels his mouth getting wider, his cheeks parting to allow for more razor-sharp teeth, saliva pooling and overflowing from his parted, thin lips.

The goblin cowers in fear for the first time, hand gripping the handle of his knife and head bowing slightly to one side, and Peter blinks, unable to parse through what just happened. He shakes his head and the feeling disappears, as well as the too-wide mouth. He touches his cheeks to make sure of that.

“I’ll deal with you later,” he throws back, voice normal, as he jumps over the goblin and scurries back into his house.

He puts on his mask and is almost out of the door when he turns back to douse himself in water. It’s gonna hurt either way. He runs out, shooting a line that sticks to the farthest tall tree in the meadow. After he pulls on it to help him spring up and gain momentum, he shoots another towards the goblin that’s making a beeline for the treeline. 

“Unhand me, serpent!”

“No, you’re coming with me. This is your mess, so you’re gonna help me clean this up.” There’s not much inflection in his voice, his mind busy trying to find out how the heck he’s going to stop that infernal creature.

“I’m not required to do anything!” he shouts as Peter swings them from treetop to treetop, uncaring that the goblin hits branches and trunks almost constantly. 

They stop on an outcropping protruding from the mountain range that separates Far Far Away from the sea. They’re right behind the beast.

“Unhand me, you foul serpent! You dull maggot-brain! You stench! You bloated, troll-smellin—”

“Be quiet,” he says, webbing his mouth, “I can’t think.”

The first thing that his mind comes up with is that he should find a large amount of water and just dump it on it. But that would only pause the beast, not stop it.

“Say,” he says after a while, biting his thumb nail as he watches Balrog lay waste to the villages among shrieks and roars, even if the soldiers are putting every bit of effort to repel it. “What’s its weakness?”

Muffled noises come from his left.

“What was that? I couldn’t— ouch!”

Apparently Razor Face decided to kick him in the shin. He’s about to throw him the mother of all glares, hopping about as he nurses his injured leg when he sees the webs stuck to his face.

“Ah. I forgot.”

The mother of all glares is directed back at him as he leans down and rips the webs.

“You vile serpent! I’ll kill you with my—”

Peter sticks the web back, lifting a warning finger. “Listen here, foul mouth, I need a simple answer. If you say anything more than that, I’m gonna make a cocoon out of you. See if you can breathe enough to spout all that nonsense. Understood?”

Razor Face nods reluctantly, so Peter narrows his eyes at him in warning as he slowly unpeels the web again.

“So? Weakness.”

“It has none,” he huffs, pushing his pointy chin up.

“I don’t believe you.” Peter pauses, assessing the midget. “Or is it true that if you—” He shakes his head. That’s not like him. “How did you bind it to you?”

“How else would you bind such a powerful creature, you brain-rotten ma—” Peter points to the web still in his left hand and the goblin growls low. “Blood. Blood bindings are the strongest.”

Peter looks at the beast. He can’t think like this. He needs to be in action. Besides, the only solution to this problem is him doing away with the foul-smelling midget, and despite the goblin being so full of hatred, Peter got used to talking to him.

“Argh!” he says as he ruffles his hair, dislodging his mask and then putting it back in place. “I’ll be back.”

He leaps over the edge, straightening his bone legs behind him so that when he lands on Balrog, it’s with the force of a falling boulder. It’s better than that. At the moment of the impact, Balrog’s whole body leans toward left so much that it loses its footing and falls.

“Nothing beats rough handling,” Peter says as he lifts himself up on his bone legs on top of the beast.

He doesn’t see the molten tail coming until his spider sense alerts him— but it’s too late. He’s hurled yards away on the other side of the beast, leaving behind a long trail of broken trees and overturned earth, the smell of dust and the crisp night air making Peter sneeze. But he jumps back in action before he fully stops, shooting lines and using his bone legs to reach Balrog faster.

“Oh, it’s on!” he says as he leaps into a long arc in the air, bone legs spread like a fan on both sides and legs gathered close to his body. 

He crawls up on its hind leg, avoiding the unruly tail as much as possible. The stench of burning flesh clings to the beast like flies to a carcass and Peter should really put his efforts into creating a better mask because this one doesn’t filter anything. Already his wet clothes are dry to a crisp, the temperature on Balrog being higher than the hottest summer day he’s ever lived through.

Balrog bucks up and down, feeling Peter on its back and being furious in its quest to throw him off. Boulders shoot at it from the right side, the guards not giving this up, and Peter crawls as fast as possible. He shoots a line at the back of its head, doing several full swings until he has enough webs secured around its throat to hold for a while. Then he shoots another from his free hand towards the outcropping he’s been on earlier.

With him in the center, he puts every ounce of his power into pulling Balrog away from the castle. But the beast is resisting Peter. Making. Every. Hard. Won. Inch. Harrowing.

“Come on, come on,” Peter grits out, closing his eyes.

Just as he’s about to pull the beast all the way back, a boulder sails right through the web that’s connected to Balrog’s head, tearing it apart like one’s hand would do with a cobweb. Balrog falls back on its forelegs and bucks up with his hind ones, destroying the face of the mountain.

Peter has to relinquish the other line and look for a landing spot as he’s jumping from falling rock to falling rock. But just as his spider sense comes back to life, Balrog’s molten tail wraps itself around his middle, singing through his clothes and his flesh. 

Peter cries out, at the same time catching the sight of the goblin falling among the rolling boulders, and before he manages to shoot a line towards him, Balrog throws him away.

He crashes through the castle’s front wall and into the inner yard, scaring the chickens and pigs as he lands into the pigsty. Even from this disadvantageous point, he can still see Balrog’s head, it’s infernal firey eyes zooming in on Peter. He has a hard time pulling himself up, his middle burned and his bone legs scrambling to lift him up. 

But just as Balrog lifts a huge claw prepared to level to the ground the entire castle, a shrill scream erupts from its maw before he dissolves into thin air like burnt paper.

For a long minute, Peter doesn’t breathe as an eerie silence befalls the castle. Then the guards stationed on the outer walls and outside the castle cheer unanimously, and Peter releases the breath that he’s been holding.

With a hand wrapped around his middle, he manages to push himself up to his feet, using the wall as support.

“I must say,” comes a voice from his left and when Peter’s head snaps towards it, his heart somersaults and his whole body tenses up painfully at the sight of what the man is holding, “I didn’t think the infamous Black Spider would be this scrawny stable boy.”

He twirls Peter’s mask between his hands, a lopsided smirk meeting Peter’s dread-filled face. If he wasn’t so frozen in his shock that his brain was full of bouncing, flimsy thoughts, he’d have pointed out that he’s been out of his teenage years for quite some time now. Twenty-two summer solstices to be exact.

“Please give it back,” Peter says feebly, crawling towards him in an attempt to lunge and take it forcefully.

But the man, the castle’s master _ and _the North Forest’s lord, is nimble on his feet, and deflects Peter easily.

“I’m not sure that would be wise of me,” he quips, the smirk darkening his eyes.

The hard thuds of the guards returning has Peter feel the creep of panic along his spine.

“You don’t understand, I need that back!” He tries again.

“Hmm.” Ajax considers the mask, turning it this way and that way, taking his sweet time. “I think I understand. Still, as a lord, I have a duty towards the people. I need to let them know who the one behind the mask of Black Spider is.”

“No! Please don’t! They don’t need to know!” Peter says in a hurry, crawling towards him again, but the man stubbornly keeps being just out of Peter’s reach.

“Why not? It’s their right. You’re their hero, are you not?” The smirk turns into a chilling grin. “The one keeping them _ safe. _Not me. No. Just you.”

“It’s not true!” Peter continues, glancing back at the torches approaching the gate and the clink of armour on the walls as the guards move towards the lower levels, probably to report to their lord. “You’re doing a great job ensuring their safety. So please, give it back. I promise you won’t see me ever again.”

“Oh? Is that true?” Ajax muses, attention on the mask, and Peter inches closer to him as inconspicuously as he can. “If I give this piece of leather back to you, you’ll disappear from my sight?”

“Yes! So please.” He’s _ so close. _

Ajax throws the mask over his shoulder only to catch it in the palm of the other hand. Peter almost touched it! 

“But I don’t want that.” He turns a close-mouthed grin towards Peter, his dark gaze making Peter have the chills.

“What do you want, then?”

“Hm, I wonder what can I make you do so that you can repay me for all the trouble your meddling—” he takes in Peter, “legs gave me.” More excruciating seconds pass, time in which Peter’s sweating and hurting like he’s repeatedly passed through a grinder. “What about this? You know about the prince who’s been locked away in the Swallowtail Tower, south from here?”

Peter frowns. “No. Who would even do such a thing?”

“His parents, apparently.” Ajax shrugs. 

“What did he do to deserve such a horrible faith?”

“He was born.” 

The way in which he says that, not to mention the open-mouthed, degenerate grin, has Peter lean back, horrified that someone would be so gleeful about such a heinous faith.

“My lord, the beast has been annihilated!” an over-eager guard shouts even before the gate rolls all the way up.

Peter has no time left. “So what do you want me to do? Rescue him?”

“Yes.”

That has him feel like somebody slapped him. “That’s— very kind of you, considering that you looked like you were about to suggest I go murder him.”

Ajax chuckles. “What good would a dead prince do to my plans? So? Will you accept or will you resign yourself to your secret being known to everybody.”

He glances at the gate, almost a quarter of the way down the square, then turns his attention behind Ajax at the open door of one of the two turrets where the clink of armor was becoming louder and louder as the guards approached the exit.

“Argh, okay, fine! I’ll rescue this prince. Now give me back my mask!”

Ajax grins, throwing the mask up and down for a bit more before he throws it Peter’s direction.

“Don’t forget,” he says as he turns his back while Peter shoots a line towards the opposite wall. “I know how you look.”

He’s out of there just in the nick of time as the guards flood the inner yard almost at once. Without hesitating, he crawls as fast as possible through the knee-high grass plain towards the rocks that fell at the base of the mountain. He calls goblin’s name, both the one that he gave him and the one that the goblin gripes about, but nobody answers. 

After hours of crawling over the rocks and pushing them off with no result, Peter finally admits defeat and returns home— dejected, wounded, and feeling like he lost more than one battle.

***

_ “Don’t forget, I know how you look,” _ Peter mimics in his best Lord Ajax voice he can make as he kicks pebbles off the road. He adjusts his bludgeoning satchel. “Of course out of all the people who could’ve discovered my secret, _ he’s _the one that does,” he mutters to himself as he walks on the path leading towards the end of the North Forest and the beginning of the Enchanted Woods.

It takes him the entire day to reach the edge of the forest. By nightfall he finds a fallen tree and lights up a fire. No way is he going to brave the Enchanted Woods during the night. He might not have been there, but he’s heard enough stories about those woods to use extreme caution.

He takes out the map he found in his old man’s coffer. In the middle of it, Far Far Away Kingdom lies, an almost S-shaped leaf. Towards north-east, Farther Away flanks it, while along the west side where a mountain range almost hugs the land lies the ocean, and the whole southern region is occupied by Not Quite Away Kingdom, the one that’s been giving them grief for the past two decades.

Now, he’s making his way down south, towards the center of Far Far Away. A big shadow separates North Forest and the castle of Lord Powers from the middle of the rounded E mountain range: the Enchanted Woods. It’s not an apt description for how big it looks like, but in ancient times this place was actually two dozen yards wide. 

Or so the villages old people tell the stories.

Right at the end of the middle line there’s the shape of a skull where, presumably, a volcano lies. Now, he doesn’t know anything about them apart from the fact that they’re hot and could burn a human alive if you get near it. 

At the base of the side that’s facing the Enchanted Woods, the ruins of the Swallowtail Keep lie. The map records it as Keep and not Tower, so Peter’s not sure which one is true. That’s where the prince should be.

He takes the last bite from the hare thigh he had cooked before leaving his cottage and throws the bones into the fire, eliciting a pleased crackle.

No matter how hard he looks at the map, there’s no way around these woods. He could try climbing the mountain and then crawling over to the keep, but he’s woefully unprepared for the cold up there. He’d rather take his chances with the enchanted woods than freeze to death before he even traverses the whole length of the mountain.

Just as he’s folding the map and placing it back in his satchel, his spider sense goes on high alert.

He deflects the attack easily by sliding off to one side of the trunk as a blur of black and brown cannon-balls its way through with a high-pitched, familiar roar right into the fire Peter made.

Razor Face cries out as he rolls this and that way to put out the flames, and Peter can only stare dumbfounded at a very much alive goblin.

“Razor Face, you’re alive!”

“You serpent!” shouts the goblin after he puts out the flames. “You foiled my plans again! Prepare to die!”

But Peter webs his front, immobilizing him even before he takes a step, only to pull him fast into a hug, web sticking them together.

“I never thought I’d be so happy to see your noseless, hideous face!” Peter says, overjoyed, as he crushes the goblin to his chest. “Even the smell of rotten eggs makes me happy!”

“Release me, you spineless, two-legged worm!” Razor Face wheezes, trying to struggle but to no avail. Peter’s arms are like iron bars around him.

“Yes, the foul vocabulary, too.” He crushes the poor goblin more before he places him down. “But how did you escape from— I saw you falling with the rocks when the—”

“Yes, I was falling to _ my _death, you maggot brain-dead chicken! And it was all because of you! I was lucky two big boulders flanked me after I fell.”

“I’m so happy you’re okay!”

“No thanks to you!” he spits out. “I got knocked unconscious and when I woke up, Balrog was gone and it was already morning.”

“Oh, so I only needed to knock you unconscious for the beast to go back to where it came from, hmm,” he muses, staring at a dying ember near Razor Face’s foot.

“I’m gonna murder you in your sleep!” Razor Face seethes.

Peter grins open-mouthed. “I’d like to see you try.”

And there must be something on his face or in his eyes because Razor Face coils back a bit.

“Anyway, glad you could join me. Right, how did you find me? Are you hungry?” he asks, already leaning towards his satchel to take out one of the three apples he picked up on his way.

“Famished!” he promptly answers and Peter uses this opportunity to stuff a whole apple into that razor-sharp mouth of his. 

His face scrunches up, not expecting an apple of all things to be fed with, but his teeth make quick work of it. “Disgusting! Your betrayal knows no bounds, you serpent!” 

“So how did you find me?”

“Followed you.”

“Huh, you must not have ill intentions when you’re trying to keep up with me.”

“I can keep up with you just fine.”

Peter measures him up and down. “Really?” 

Razor Face spouts more of his colourful vocabulary and Peter just sits back and listens, sometimes adding a quip or two, because for all his spiteful behavior, he does share personal matters — every once in a while. And if Peter listens really hard, he can also hear that loneliness that plagues both of them, but which neither would admit to deliberately.

“Okay, I’m turning in. You, on the other hand,” he shoots a line and then connects it to a high branch, then shoots some more to cover the goblin’s mouth. “Stay put for a couple of hours until I rest.”

Muffled noises and struggling ensues, but Peter simply stocks the fire and takes out the blanket he brought with him. Nights are chilly, no matter how hot it is during the day.

“Goodnight, Razor Face!”

_ “Mnnfff!” _

***

“You’re heading in the wrong direction serpent! It’s this way you need to go.”

Peter looks at the road before him, flanked by grass and flowers and tall trees through which the sunlight filters. Then at the little path behind Razor Face, dark and tunneled by the overgrown bushes.

“Doesn’t look like it,” he says more than skeptic.

Razor Face growls or sighs— he can never figure that out. He walks up on the road, and starts moving his hands up, then down, then in a semi-circle.

_ “Ach’ntum suknatim ach’ntarn bali talim!” _And then he blows some kind of powder from his palm.

The road shimmers then disappears, revealing dead trees, fog, darkness and no road in sight.

“Whoa! Since when do you know magic?”

“I travel a lot,” Razor Face says idly. “Now follow me.”

“How do I know you’re not leading me astray?” Peter asks, reluctantly following him since his primary road was revealed to be just a trick the woods played on him. 

“If I wanted to, I’d have let you continue on that road.”

“What if this isn’t just an elaborate ploy to make me trust you and then you lead me to my death?”

“I tried countless times since the wretched day you foiled my plans. There’s luck stuck to your hide harder to defeat than the mold between my toes.”

Peter grimaces and bows so that he doesn’t hit the twined thorns.

“How do you know this is the right path?”

“In these woods there is no right path. Just shortcuts that lead to shortcuts that are less dangerous than the straight road you were taking.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“How?”

“Do you ever shut up?”

“Hours ago you were trying to kill me. Sorry if I’m not very trusting right now.”

The goblin sighs, cutting more overgrown thorns.

“Hours ago we were on even ground. No outside forces to care about. But here… one wrong step and we both die. As disgusting as it sounds, but we have to stick together. Until we emerge on the other side.”

Peter grinned. “So you want a truce.”

“Wipe that hideous grin off your face, serpent!”

“You’re surprisingly docile.”

“I need a level head to deal with whatever waits for us. Now shut up.”

“Oh, so you _ can _be cool and calm. I was starting to wonder if your spiteful self wasn’t the default state of your being.”

“Sst!”

He crouches at once and Peter follows seconds later, looking over Razor Face’s strands of white hair at the meadow they’re upon.

“What is it?”

“Something’s not right.”

“Uh-oh usually that sentence is followed by my— “

And there it is, his spider sense goes skywards, but before he can react, a thorned liana catches Razor Face by the ankle and drags him off to Peter’s left.

“Razor Face!” He lunges for the goblin, but the passage closes swiftly.

The place becomes eerily quiet again. Something else is about to happen.

“Razor Face?” he whispers, hyper aware of his surroundings, body bent down in a defensive position.

But nothing attacks him.

“Razor Face where are you?” He tries again, same whispered tone of voice.

With nothing moving around him, he slowly steps into the meadow, every sense on high alert for the slightest shift in sound, temperature, and sight. Whatever is out there doesn’t fail to come for him and he transforms at once, running and jumping from tree to tree. The thorned lianas can’t keep up with his speed, but they sure as hell try a lot of tricks, which steers him in different directions.

He’s too busy trying to stay out of their grasp to wonder if he’ll ever be able to make it out of there and rescue the prince or if he’ll forever walk these woods like a lost soul.

Just as he dodges a bunch of lianas rushing towards him from his left, throwing himself off to the right and letting the air and the momentum carry him further, he lands on the ground and shoots short bursts of webs to stick the lianas to the trees. It’s when he stops backtracking because nothing else is coming for him that he has time to take in his surroundings.

Nothing much except trees in various deformed shapes, some tall, some bent down to the ground, some with a thick foliage, others bare and dry. The ground covered in dead leaves, a fine mist advances on him, and it smells of stagnant water, but also like oncoming rain. When he turns around, a little cottage sits quietly several steps away from him where previously there was nothing. It’s smaller than his and in less great shape. The thatch roof is in dire need of changing, not to mention that the two wooden pillars that sustain the overhang look like a stiff wind could blow them away.

Speaking of wind. It’s only now that he realizes that there hasn’t been the slightest whiff. 

His bone legs withdraw into his back and his eyes return to just one pair, now that he calmed down. He passes by a sign just besides a tree.

“Enchanted Little House?” He lifts an eyebrow, looking at the house in question. “And the claw marks on the sign are supposed to inspire trust?” he says as he walks up the two steps and finds the door slightly ajar. 

There is no way that what’s on the other side is just an old lady baking apple pies. His stomach growls at the memory of how good MJ’s apple pie tastes. And that thought reminds Peter of Aunt May’s pumpkin pie and stuffed turkey with roasted potatoes. His mouth waters and he has to push away those thoughts. He can’t afford to be distracted now.

As soon as he’s over the threshold, the door closes behind him with a resolute slam.

It takes him a moment too long to adjust to sudden pitch darkness as his eyes multiply, but he trusts his instincts.

The room he’s in is spacious and bare except for a rocking chair near the window and a table on the other side of the room, away from the only other door leading somewhere except the one at his back.

“Hello? Anybody here?” he calls out, seeing as nothing happens. “There must be someone here. Houses don’t have a life of their own without someone to pull the strings.”

“True,” comes a man’s voice right behind him, but when he whirls around, no one is there.

“Who said that?” But just as he turns around again, his body jolts, as if he stumbled over something.

Nothing is at his feet, then he lifts his head again and there’s a full body length mirror a few steps away. Without even thinking about it, he moves towards that, the thuds of his bone legs rhythmic on the wooden floor. He takes himself in, unable to take his eyes off of the clear image in the mirror, how the three pairs of eyes are half melded into each other. They’re black with a red and white sheen around the edges, not quite mixing together but coexisting side by side. His nose is flatter and his facial bone structure is different, yet he can’t quite point out how because it feels as if it’s the kind of detail you see only from the corner of your eye. It disappears when you stare too much.

He extends his hand, wanting to touch and see if it’s real. The moment his fingertips make contact with the smooth, cool surface of the mirror, others emerge from the floor flanking the first in a wide circle.

Now Peter sees himself from every angle and he turns round and round, unable to settle on one. Different versions of himself stare back at him, fat, scrawny, wobbly, tall, goblin size, old, toddler, with limbs where they shouldn’t be, with more than six eyes. It’s so disorienting that the moment one mirror shows the goblin he lost he freezes for a moment.

“Razor Face?” But just as he hurries towards the mirror at the farthest side of the circle, he disappears.

Then reappears in another one, and then another and another, making Peter lunge for him every time he catches a glimpse in a mirror, until he lunges too hard and crashes through one.

Only he doesn’t crash, he falls into the mirror and wakes up in a dark room. Well, dark around the pool of light that shines on him. He can’t see the source because the light is too strong. He’s never seen anything this strong— except the sun. But the sun gives off a warm, yellow-y shine. This is cold, harsh and white-bluish.

_ Tik. _

_ Tik-tik-tik. Clack. _

_ Tik. _

_ Tik-tik-tik. Clack. _

Drag.

_ Tik-tik-clack-drag-tik-tik-tik-clack. _

Stop.

Something is moving beyond the circle of light and Peter’s night vision doesn’t reveal anything but the thick darkness. The problem is that throughout this his spider sense has not been tipped off once. So whatever is happening here doesn’t mean any harm— or there is something more complex than magic tricks at work here.

A puppet lunges at him out of the thick darkness, and Peter jumps back, half of his body out of the light circle. The puppet is attached to a stick, and the wide smile, red lipstick tracing the limits of its mouth, creeps Peter out. But not as much as when the lower jaw opens, and then clicks back up in a facsimile of laughing.

He’s pretty sure the doll doesn’t laugh, but there is the sound of laughter coming from everywhere.

“Hello person who hides in the shadows,” he says because that’s how he works through his worries and fears and everything else: by babbling. “Sorry to trespass on what seems to be your property, but someone was taken from me and I’d like to have him back. I see that you like to play magic tricks on unassuming strangers. Fine. Who am I to judge someone’s hobby? I, too, have a weird hobby by other people’s standards.” He pauses, searching the darkness. “I suppose you also retreated into the woods to escape their judging comments. So from one recluse to another, could you return the goblin to me? You have my word we’ll be on our merry way.” 

“What makes you think it’s not me doing this, Peter?” Razor Face’s voice says, and Peter looks everywhere, trying to find the source.

“Where’s Razor Face?”

“I am the Green Goblin!”

“No, you’re just somebody impersonating him. Razor Face calls me many things but never my name. Where is he?”

Silence. Then the pool of light disappears.

“You’ll never see him again,” the voice threatens, now much rougher and like it doesn’t belong to a human being, but also like it’s both close to his ear and far away, echoing. “You will never, ever— _ welcome to Fantasy World— _ no, stop _ — you’ll feel dizzy after a moment, but that’s okay — _ stop doing that, you wretched — _ hello and welcome to Guts and Candies, how may I help you? — _no, no!”

Peter is fast at pinpointing the exact location of that voice and just as fast reacting by throwing a line into the dark and then pulling. What comes into the pool of light is an old man clad in dark and light purple robes with a few golden rings on his fingers. The light brown glasses are something Peter has never seen.

Why would you shield your eyes only, if you want to hide who your are?

“Wizard!” he accuses, then steps back when the wizard pushes himself up.

But just as he’s about to answer Peter’s accusation, both their attentions are attracted by sparks that appear out of nowhere a little ways off the wizard’s left side. They’re eating at what appears to be a wick— connected to the wizard’s robes. 

“Blasts and thunders! Again with the parlor tricks, Sal?” he gripes as he steps on it a couple of times to put it out. Snickers come from around them, and Peter finds himself wondering, out of all the things he could wonder about, if he would have really exploded. But he’s a wizard, he can’t trust anything the wizard says or Peter sees.

“Why did you trap me here?”

“Fun. This world is going to the dogs, might as well have fun while it still exists.”

“What do you mean?”

The wizard flutters a hand dismissively.

“Where’s Razor Face?”

“Somewhere around here.” He turns to the side, both fists on his hips and looks into the darkness as if he’s looking over a valley or some other scenery. “I don’t remember where I put that foul-smelling thing.”

“Please give him back. I need him to show me the way out of this forest.”

That makes the wizard turn his attention back on Peter.

“Yer trying to get out, ain’t you?”

Reluctantly, Peter says, “yes.”

“Been trying that for decades. Can’t do. The forest doesn’t let anybody out once in.”

“What? No.” Okay, that is making Peter’s heart go into overdrive. “No. It’s not true. I can’t stay here forever. Not stuck with you.”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?” the wizard gets out and more sniggers are heard from the darkness.

“Wait. You’re a wizard. I can’t trust anything you say.” Now Peter turns a suspicious eye (or three pairs of them) on the wizard. “Give Razor Face back please and we’ll be out of your hair in a jiffy.”

The wizard snaps his fingers. “Got that, Pedro? ‘Out of your hair in a jiffy’, put it on the tape. Will be perfect for the next play.”

“Got it, boss,” a grumpy voice comes from the darkness.

“Who was that?” Peter demands. “What is happening? Why are we still in the dark?”

“Forgot to pay the bills, I’m afraid.”

That is an accent Peter has never heard. And the wording is even more weird.

“Anyway,” the wizard’s voice returns to Peter’s kind of normal. “That was my personal assistant and head writer.” He lowers his voice. “Don’t tell him that I pay him the same as the rest. In this day and age you’ll have the labor unions on your back before you say Rumplestils—stlils—stilstkin.” He sneezes.

The darkness disappears to reveal the front room he walked into not long ago. And a struggling goblin, tied up and gagged, lying on the floor between four— gnomes.

“Hey, wasn’t the entire race annihilated when the Not Quite Far Kingdom laid siege on their territory five decades ago?”

The wizard turns around to look at the bored expressions of the gnomes as if this is the first time he sees them.

“Oh, right. That happened in this timeline,” he mutters to himself, which, again, makes Peter frown. 

Is this wizard spouting gibberish? He knows that wizards, as a general rule, are never quite right in the head due to the amount of magic their bodies and minds are imbued with, but this one kind of exceeds how Peter portrayed them to be in his mind.

Yes, this is the first time he encounters a wizard in flesh and bone.

“Well, these four are the last of their species,” he says with a flourish of his hand. “‘Lo and behold.”

“Boss,” a gnome enters the room through the back door, a sort of book without the front cover in his hands, “the costumes you ordered are delayed by an hour and the costume designer had a breakdown in the lounge room. Madam Linda refuses to dress in the newly appointed dress.”

“What?” The floor kinda shudders at that, which makes Peter step back a bit, not sure what to expect from an angry wizard. “FedEx assured me that they’ll put their fastest Pegasus on my order. Lying bastards. See if I renew my premium membership with them. Tell Linda that if she doesn’t dress in the next minute she’s gonna be out of a job. There are fifty other actresses at the door ready to take on the weight and despair of Queen Victoria. And call Spot in. He’s the only one who can calm down Bard. Chop chop, we ain’t got all summer to prepare this event!”

The gnome nods and disappears back into the room he came from. Peter is too stunned to say anything for a while. Then loud, wood-shaking, barks erupt followed by laughter from behind the closed door.

“That’s our all time favorite Spot,” the wizard explains as if Peter wants to know about that. He actually does. “He’s a darling— even though he drools all over the place. When you have three drooling mouths… I should prepare myself for displeased comments from the cleaning crew.”

“Sal threatened to quit last time you had Spot in, boss,” one of the grumpy gnomes quips and Razor Face growls, struggling with more impatience than before.

“Right.” The wizard looks into the mid-distance, his features becoming more haggard than they were, before snapping out of it. “Right, where were we?”

“You were going to release Razor Face so we can leave you to— whatever you are doing?”

“Right! No can do.”

“What?”

“I can’t let you go now that you know my secret.”

Peter frowns. “What secret?”

“The play, boy.”

“And who am I gonna tell that to? I don’t even know who your audience will be.”

“The Farther Away royal family.”

“Why did you tell me that, if it’s a secret?”

As answer, the wizard only smiles, a little mischievous upturn of lips. Peter groans, seeing the ploy. But wizards are not impossible to deal with. He just needs to find the angle that will convince him to let Peter and Razor Face go.

“Say, what about an exchange?” Peter proposes.

He could have sworn that a glint appeared in the wizard’s eyes before he pushed his dark-tinted glasses up his nose. There and gone in the blink of an eye.

“An exchange? What of?”

“I can give you this mechanism,” Peter produced his father’s compass from his little satchel, “that points you in the direction of south or north so you can never get lost. In exchange for this grandiose device, I ask you to let me and Razor Face go.”

Never mind that it never worked, the little jagged arrows moving round and round whenever Peter wanted to use it.

“That’s a Windrose.” He leans over to look at the arrows chasing each other endlessly. “Used at sea by the pirate it forms a bond with. It will point him or her in the direction of what he or she truly desires. The pirate this compass bonded with is not dead or hasn’t forfeited the bond yet. So I can’t use it.”

Now that is both surprising and a letdown. His father’s compass is that useless. Fine. No problem, he still has a couple of things he can bargain for their freedom.

“Then how about—”

“Tell you what, son,” he says, inspecting Peter’s bone legs. “If you agree to appear in my motion pictures then I’ll let you both go.”

“What does that mean?”

“Motion pictures? It’s images in motion.”

“And what would I need to do?”

“Tap dance.”

“Tap what?” 

“You know.” He snaps his fingers again and a skeleton with a black hat and a black cane begins dancing in a weird fashion.

“I never danced,” Peter says, a new kind of dread pouring over his spine.

“Haven’t you?” the wizard hums, then snaps his fingers and Peter’s bone legs begging imitating the skeleton. “Your legs disagree.”

“Hey, wait, what did you do?”

“I’m gonna sweeten the deal, son. What about you feature in this motion picture and on top of letting you and your friend there go, I’ll throw in this.”

He twists his fingers and a deck card appears. The King. Peter stares at it.

“And why would I need that?”

The wizard grins. “It’s not a normal card. You can use this to trap any one being in, no matter how big or powerful it is, and only you are able to get it back out. No summoning spell, no matter how strong, will be able to break it out.”

Peter narrows down his eyes. “Again, why would I need that? I can deal with my opponents on my own. Plus it only works with one being.”

“Yes, but you’re going to rescue the prince, ain’t you?”

He does a double take. “How did you know that? No, don’t answer that. Even still, I don’t see why I’d need this.”

“The Swallowtail ruins are guarded by a ferocious dragon. Some say that she’s the last of her kind, but those people have never travelled beyond Farther Away.”

“Wait. There’s a dragon? Nobody told me anything about a dragon!” He scrubs his face, sighing deeply. “That manipulative—” He stares at the card still trapped between the wizard’s bony index and middle finger. “Are you sure it can trap a dragon?”

“Any kind of being.”

“Prove it.”

The wizard lifts a white eyebrow, inviting Peter to elaborate.

“You’re a powerful being…”

He chuckles. “Nice try, son.”

Peter smirks lopsided, but his attention strays to the struggling goblin and the muffled noises he’s making. Right, he was still bound.

“So that magic card and me— dancing for this motion picture stuff. That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“Just once, then. One dance and then we’re off.”

“Deal.”

Even before he finishes that word, the wizard snaps his fingers and a swarm of gnomes pour in, most carrying some device or other. Of course Peter is not the one moving his bone legs as seamlessly and rhythmically as they are, but Peter doesn’t really care that magic is involved in this as long as they do whatever they need to do to get it in this motion pictures thing the wizard has going on and then leave them alone.

There are gnomes holding this three-legged brown device, a group of gnomes moving this way and that way with some panels that reflect the light that other gnomes shine on. And then the wizard sitting on a high stool with a white cone which he uses to amplify his voice.

That one Peter finds interesting. He could use the design for some of his projects that got stuck because there was something missing and he didn’t know what.

Anyway, the wizard could sit on the ground and he’d still be taller than the gnomes. Not to mention that they’re all in close proximity, so he doesn’t need that cone to make himself heard.

All Peter does is go left several steps, then right, twice, and they’re done.

“As promised, son.” 

The gnomes untie Razor Face and Peter goes to his side, but before he reaches him, the goblin produces a rusty knife out of his rags and attacks the first gnome, the shrill cry out freezing the room.

“No, wait!” But Peter is too slow to lunge and catch him before he harms the gnome.

Nobody manages to get over the shock before a huge three-headed dog crashes through the wall in the wake of the gnome’s shout and Razor Face has the gal to launch himself and try to kill it. Again, he doesn’t make it in time to stop him, but he catches the goblin midair when one of the dog’s mouths grabs his arm and throws him off. They both crash into the corner of the room.

“I’ll swim in your guts once I finish—”

“Okay,” Peter says, covering his mouth and pushing them both up. “I think it’s time we leave.”

He has to roll over between the dog’s front paws to avoid those massive jaws, but he can’t avoid the drooling— and Razor Face gets the worst of it. Through his usual colorful language and struggling, Peter secures him under his arm and makes a fast exit through the open window before he shoots a line and they swing off— hopefully in the right direction.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They finally meet.

***

“Is this another illusion? Spell?” Peter asks as his attention returns from the cottage that disappears behind the trees as if they only parted to let Peter pass.

This part of the forest he’s swinging them by is sunlit, but different from the one he saw before the whole wizard stint, and looks— normal. Peter’s kind of normal. Not the usual normal because that is so relative around these parts.

“I don’t know,” Razor Face grumbles, still struggling to get out of Peter’s iron grip. He’s not going to lose his goblin again. “Now put me down you serpent! Your underarm stink is killing me!”

“Well, excuse me for sweating buckets after the stints I pulled back there. You can’t have heroism without sweat, but you wouldn’t know.”

“Goblins don’t perspire, rat!”

“Oh, so now it’s rat? Serpent doesn’t cut it anymore?”

“Unhand me, you foul worm!”

Peter lands between two oak trees that seem to guard a beaten path. Razor Face struggles to get out from under Peter’s arm, but Peter’s faster and he grabs his arms, lifting the goblin up to his shoulder level.

“Why did you do that?” Peter grits out, unable to parse through the rush of convoluted emotions he’s feeling right now.

“I don’t answer to you! Unhand me at once, you horrendous—”

“You almost died!”

Razor Face stares at Peter and Peter stares back, breathing heavily and ready to tear through this little bugger. 

“What’s it to you? I’m a thorn in your side. If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you cared.”

“You don’t know me better,” Peter says, resolute.

They both fall silent, and the goblin doesn’t say anything else for a long while. Peter places him down on the grass and passes his dirty hand through his already messy crop of hair before he sighs deeply. He walks into the creek nearby to wash his hands and face— and cool his head off. Emotions are running twice as high as usual.

Maybe his preferred isolation doesn’t do him as good as he thought it would. Sure, there’s quiet (apart from the occasional goblin appearances) and he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants without anybody telling him otherwise.

That’s the life.

But that’s also not quite  _ the  _ life.

Maybe he could work towards visiting his friends more often? Or have his friends come by once in a while. Then again, maybe not. He’s strangely protective of his personal space. He wouldn’t be all right to have it invaded even by his own friends.

That’s a dilemma, if he ever saw one.

Oh, and now he knows how to implement that self-watering system, using the power of air and a modified version of the cone.

“Are you done sloshing around?” 

The anger in his voice is tamer than usual, and the only reason Peter is picking up on this is because it has been a constant friend since the time they forged this unlikely acquaintance. 

“We’d do well to get out…” the goblin’s right ear twitches, “before sundown…” 

He turns his attention behind him at the treeline decorated by thick bushes on the other side of the beaten path.

Peter is just exiting the creek and climbing up to where Razor Face is when he, too, becomes aware of the rustling going on just out of their sight. But Peter’s alarms don’t go off. Don’t even stir. So whatever is coming towards them is not evil.

That is, until two people spring out of the trees and  _ now  _ his—  _ something  _ goes off, but beneath his skin, before the boy crashes into him and they roll down the small hill and into the creek.

“Ouch!” Peter groans because there be stones in it and one is digging into his back. 

“Miles, stay still! I can’t take it off if you don’t!” a man’s voice comes from behind the boy and Peter realizes that the buzz under his skin is different than the usual squeezing of his stomach and adrenaline surge.

It never did that.

“Take it off, take it off!” The boy cries out and the man comes to Peter’s side and bends down to take off— the mother of all spiders.

Peter watches in bafflement as the man pulls up a spider so huge that it’d cover Peter’s entire chest.

“Done.” He throws the spider away, it scuttling off without a backward glance. “Why are you so afraid of spiders when you were bitten by one?”

“I was bitten by one without my consent! That’s different,” the boy gripes, pushing himself off of Peter before he becomes aware of him— and the cries of war that are the goblin charging at them. “Hey man, sorry! Didn’t see you there! You okay?” He extends a hand, but he frowns.

Meanwhile, Razor Face runs with his trusted jagged bone knife lifted above his head. The other stranger, who is standing slightly to the side of Razor Face’s path, simply turns and shoots three lines of webs, which makes him face-plant in the creek.

“What’s with this goblin?” the man comments, placing a hand on his hip as he watches Razor Face struggle.

“You,” the boy directs his words at Peter, attracting his friend’s attention. “You… why do you feel… familiar?”

But Peter’s frowning at the rough treatment that Razor Face got as he pushes himself up.

“Hey, he’s gonna drown!” He rushes over to a goblin whose head is surrounded by bubbles and pulls him up, ripping off the webs like they’re made of twigs. “You okay?”

“I’ll have their heads served for dinner tonight!” Razor Face splutters, venom in his eyes as he glares at the two strangers.

“You’re okay,” Peter declares with a sigh of relief.

“He with you?” the boy quips, coming closer.

“Ah, no,” Peter says, putting a palm up to stop the advances as he keeps his other fisted into Razor Face’s dirty vest. “I advise you to not come any closer. He’s not what you might call… reasonable.”

The boy frowns, but doesn’t take another step. And Peter notices the strange clothes they wear; the boy has a tight suit of black and red, while his friend’s blue and red. Both masked. Peculiar, though not bad.

“You feel… familiar,” the man says, sizing Peter up and down.

Peter frowns, a struggling and sputtering goblin still held steady at his side. “I’ve never seen you two before.”

“No, not in that sense. You,” and he flutters his hand between himself and Peter, “y’know?”

Peter cants his head and thinks about it, then a quip from the man about the boy’s fear of spiders and him using webs to stop Razor Face makes the pieces fall in place.

“You were bitten by a spider, too?” They both nod. “I thought I was the only one.”

He stands up, placing a struggling Razor Face under his arm.

“Wow, I can’t believe it, Peter!” the boy says. “He’s like us!”

Peter blinks. “How do you know my name?”

They pause, the masks’ staring eyes making Peter feel kinda naked, then the boy says, “your name is Peter?” He nods. “Whoa, that’s…” He shares a look with his taller friend.

“Let’s start with introducing ourselves,” the man says reasonably. “I’m Peter B. Parker and this is my friend, Miles Morales.”

“We’re not from around here,” Miles quips.

But Peter is trying to grapple with the knowledge that there is another person in this world that shares his name and surname.

“I’m Peter Parker,” Peter says in the end, going along with this, “and this is— Razor Face.”

“It’s Great Green Goblin for you, insects!”

“What’s with the alliteration?” Miles asks and Peter opens his mouth to agree with the sentiment. “It stopped being cool since Peter,” he throws a thumb to his left where the older Peter stands, “showed up.”

“Hey!” both Peter say in unison.

“Wait,” Miles says. “We need to find some way to distinguish between you two. I can’t call one Peter and have the other Peter answer. Hmm, what about Benji?”

“No,” Peter says.

“BJ?”

“No.”

“Peter Min?”

“No.”

“Fine,” the boy says with an exaggerated sigh, “you’re going to stay Peter and you,” he looks up at his friend, “how about Peter B.?”

Peter B. shrugs. “Works for me.”

“Done, then.” He turns towards Peter with an excited smile. “So why are you here, Peter?” He looks at the glaring goblin. “And— Little Goblin.”

“Your head will roll, maggot!” growls Razor Face.

Peter tightens his grip on the struggling goblin. “Please, call him either Razor Face or Goblin.”

_ “Great Green Goblin  _ for you peasants!”

Peter B. arches an eyebrow and Miles blinks.

“Okay— Razor Face,” Miles says. “So?” He meets Peter’s gaze.

“I’ve the task to rescue an imprisoned prince. It’s complicated.”

A strange sound escapes Miles which Peter realizes a moment later it’s the sound of excitement. 

“That’s so cool! So you’re a knight in—” he gives Peter a once over, taking in his dirty clothes from sleeping on the grass and then tumbling around in that wizard’s house. “Shining armor.”

“Miles,” Peter B. admonishes softly.

“Nah,” Peter says, “it’s okay.” But he does dust off his shirt. “No, I’m not a knight. I’m simply a man trying to do something good in exchange for something else.”

“Huh. I don’t remember fairy tales going that way.”

Peter huffs at the innocent reply. “Well, this is as far from being a fairy tale as it can get,” he says, and walks out of the creek, dragging Razor Face with him. “Now, behave,” he tells his companion, narrowing his eyes when Razor Face glares daggers at him.

He relents and huffs with a haughty I’m-only-listening-to-you-because-you’ve-saved-me-from-drowning expression, so Peter releases him and waits a handful of seconds for Razor Face to go back on his non-verbal word. But he simply puts his vest in place, checks that his jagged knife is where he put it and then marches on the hill. Peter sighs and shakes his head.

“Well, we gotta go,” he tells the two people that are making their way out of the creek. “Goodbye.”

“Hey, wait,” the boy runs towards him although Peter B. calls after him. “I’ll help you save your prince.”

“What?” Both he and Peter B. say at once.

Peter stares at the masked face, trying to comprehend what he just said.

“Miles, Miles,” Peter B. begins, trudging to the bank he and Miles are on. “My little spider apprentice. A word.” But he doesn’t wait for him to come as he drags the boy several feet away from Peter.

Furious whispers start, sometimes interspersed with Miles’ ‘but I want to!’ and ‘it’s not fair!’ and ‘you would—’, but Razor Face is not waiting for anyone, and he’s the only one who knows his way around this tricky forest, so Peter leaves the two to bicker and catches up to his friend.

But he doesn’t make it far because the non-existing wind drags from every direction towards a point down the little hill where it seems to accumulate along leaves until the wizard pops up.

He coughs, smoke filtering from his mouth before he readjust his brown-tinted glasses and long robes. He looks around, taking in Peter B. and Miles who have stopped bickering to stare at him and then his gaze lands on Peter.

“Ah! There you are.” 

He marches towards Peter and Peter instinctively backtracks until his back hits the trunk of a tree, the wizard encroaching on his personal space. He hears the sound of webs shooting and then the displacement of air as Miles and Peter B. land on light feet not far from where Peter is kinda — sorta — maybe pinned by the wizard. 

“You forgot this.” The wizard produces the card between his index and middle bony fingers. 

Peter blinks. “Uh, thanks. I guess.”

He takes the card with reluctance and the wizard smiles and steps back. Then he looks to the side.

“You two—” He readjust his glasses. “I see you ran into the Wicked Witch of the South.”

“You’re the Enchanted Woods’ Wizard, aren’t you?” Miles says.

“Bugger. Who told you that?”

“A man in a tavern,” Peter B. says, crossing his arms.

“Who knew it from another man,” Miles adds.

“Who knew it from a dark faery.”

“Who knew it from the dead bones of a Razghoul.”

“Who found out from a mermaid?”

Miles nods as if it makes total sense. “And who knew it from a— what was it?”

“I think it was a gon? Gunme?”

“Gnome,” the wizard says impatient, then swears under his breath. “That nasty Sal. He really has it in for me. Wants to see the whole business crash and burn.” He sizes the two up and down. “What do you want from me?”

“Break the—” Peter B says, pointing with his thumb towards himself.

“We need the — to be lifted. Otherwise we can’t return —” Miles continues and no, Peter didn’t imagine their voices going out over specific words.

“Are you cursed?” Peter asks.

Neither move. Actually, both become uncharacteristically still and quiet.

The wizard guffaws. “You pissed her off real good if she cast a curse that prevents you from speaking about it. Or even use your body language to convey that.”

“Please,” Miles says as if he’s struggling to get the word out. “We don’t know what to do.”

“We need to return —” 

“Right right,” the wizard says, placing his hands on his hips.

Just then a loud shriek pierces the air and all the birds fall quiet. Just above the treetops in the distance Peter can make out— flames. Is there a fight going on?

“Looks like your prince is in trouble,” the wizard says with no small amount of amusement.

Peter tears off without a second thought, forgetting about the cursed strangers, the goblin and the wizard. If there’s someone in need of help Peter won’t sit around twiddling his thumbs. He puts on his mask out of reflex and uses the trees to swing by when his bone legs don’t carry him from trunk to trunk.

It’s only when he reaches the end of the woods and he leaps into a wide arc that he sees what he’s up against from a bird’s eye view. There are the ruins and a river of gurgling— fire or some sort of viscous and almost liquid stuff surrounding the base of the large outcrop on which the keep had once stood proudly. The bridge has been reduced to two iron bars connecting the two sides. Probably the intense heat burned the wood a long time ago.

But right there, amidst the rubble and partially destroyed outer walls, a dragon with dark red skin, black claws and impressive light blue eyes (they’re shining as if fuelled by some inner light) is spitting fire. Its short neck is stretched up, the bat-like wings flared around itself, the dark red bleeding into black towards the lower half of them. 

And there, behind the column of fire a man is facing the dragon, two swords held aloft. Maybe it’s the heat playing tricks with his sight, but he thinks the man is saying something.

Peter drops, the fire petering out from the dragon’s open jaws. He uses the pause to shoot a web that catches just on the bridge of its nose so that he can swing around it and tie its mouth shut. But at the last swing, just before he finishes, a sword cuts through his web and he crashes into a half wall.

He doesn’t get to shrug off the dizziness because the tip of a second sword threatens him inches away from his face. The grip is steady, as if it’s held by a statue and not— a gorgeous man with a five o’clock shadow on his jaw, currently glaring down at him as if Peter dishonored his daughter.

“What the—” Peter gets out, his mouth ignoring the other thoughts.

“Who are you?” Then Five O’Clock dips his chin. “Shut up, he doesn’t look like a prince. No, not even a knight. That’s idiotic. Why would a prince wear a peasant disguise? Coward? But he attacked Rosie. No coward—” 

“Who are you talking to?”

Five O’Clock snaps out of it and the glare returns. Peter is struck with the thought that if this man ever smiled— Peter might be doomed. Yeah, no. Not the time or place for such stupid thoughts. Still, he can’t quite keep himself from staring at the man’s chiseled face and strong jaw, clear blue eyes that look like they’re shining just because his head is canted in such a way as to catch the sun rays at the right angle, and lips that don’t look quite soft. More like they could have the same strength as his muscled arms. 

But he can’t know that for sure if he doesn’t test them, right?

No!

Shit.

Stop. You still have a sword pointed at you, Parker! Is what that logical voice shouts at him. It’s  _ because  _ he’s pointing a sword at him that he has such thoughts, another, smaller part of him conveys and Peter grasps at any kind of semblance of self-control that he possesses. Is this another side-effect of his power? Being attracted to handsome strangers that look two wrong words away from slitting his throat?

Peter’s in deep trouble, if that’s the case.

“I’m asking the questions here,” the handsome strangers says. “Who are you?”

“I’m—” His own name almost escapes through his lips, but he remembers in time that he’s wearing a mask. “Spider-Man. I’ve come here on behalf of Lord Ajax. To rescue — the prince.” He narrows his gaze. “Are you the prince?”

The dragon’s head comes down near the man, canting it as it sniffs Peter which makes every strand of hair on his body stand on end, before its nostrils release a plume of smoke that hits Peter right in the face. Is this vengeance for shutting its mouth? But the dragon doesn’t look angry— if those expressive eyes are anything to go by. The man laughs humorlessly as Peter coughs and flutters his hand to dissipate the smoke.

“He said he’s here— to rescue — me,” he says between guffaws. “Hear that, Rosie? You’re a villainess!”

He uses the sword to cut through the webs around the dragon’s mouth and Peter uses this opportunity to stand up and dust himself off.

“Aren’t you held hostage—”

“Hostage?” He snorts. “Nah. Rosie here is my friend. The only one I’ve had through the decades.” He pats her snout and she crows, leaning into it.

“Then— wasn’t she attacking you just now?”

“That? We were letting some steam off. Haven’t had evil creatures to fight around here ever since the wizard set shop in the woods. They all seem to run away from him.”

“You know the wizard?”

“Sure do. Sometimes he makes me do silly stuff. Like tap dance.”

Peter presses his lips together before he says, “you too, huh?”

Five O’Clock’s face splits into a grin and yep, Peter’s been right — he is so doomed it’s not even funny. Not to mention that those eyes are so full of mirth and mischief— like a boy’s. And then the man gasps.

“Legs!” he says, and Peter frowns behind the mask until it clicks. 

“Oh, these. They’re a— side-effect of sorts.”

“Shit biscuits!” he continues as he circles Peter once, Peter trying to follow him with his gaze without turning. “They sprout from your back! That’s amazing! How do you do it? Do you like strike a pose and they come out? Or do you say something like RUMPLESTILTSKIN,” he shouts and Peter scrambles to cover his mouth, but doesn’t make it in time, “and then BAM, you’re like this?”

The man smiles down at Peter, not being put off by the fact that Peter is more or less leaning on a sturdy chest. He steps back, the warmth from that chest lingering on his forearms and palms, and looking for that composure he surely has a lot of. He clears his throat.

“Please don’t say such names here.”

“Why?” The grin is back, but now there’s a knowing edge to it. “Did you summon him?” He cackles when Peter remains silent. “Oh man, you did! What did he do? Did he go all dark and broody and  _ give me your first born or else?” _ He cackles some more. “Did the same with me. I told him that if he beat me at hopscotch without dropping the hula hop he can have my first born. He’s a sore loser. Hasn’t answered my calls no matter how much I shout his name.”

Peter wouldn’t want to see that creature ever again, but he kind of feels sorry for him, if what Five O’Clock says it’s true. 

“Can you? Hop around and not lose the hula hop?”

“Sure can,” Five O’Clock says, planting a hand on his hip with the proudest smile Peter’s seen on anyone’s face. Maybe except Gwen’s when she beats him at checkers. But that’s her trademark shit-eating grin. Totally different. “Would show you but Rosie here burned the last one I had. And the ones made of willow branches leave marks because they’re too heavy.”

“Huh, didn’t know that.”

He keeps smiling at Peter as they stare at each other. Peter doesn’t know what kind of face he’s making, but if the hard thuds of his heart and the uncomfortable feeling of his stomach are any indication he really doesn’t want Five O’Clock to start asking questions. He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t shy away from the less savory ones.

And he needs to find out his name. It’s getting ridiculous to call him after his sprouting beard.

“Shit,” the prince whispers and Peter becomes aware of the fact that he’s not looking at Peter anymore, but above his head.

When he turns he doesn’t see any enemy inbound. Just the sun setting behind the mountain range.

“You have to go!”

“What? Go where?” 

“Somewhere. Just not here. Shut it you two, we’re not sleeping together. No. Rosie is—”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. Just. Go. Somewhere. Anywhere. See you in the morning,” he says in a rush as Rosie settles down with a grumble and pushes up a wing so that the prince can crawl underneath.

Peter is left standing there and looking at a dragon who’s staring back and blinking lazily.

“Hey, come back out! This is not the time to sleep. We need to get going so that we can reach—”

“Not tonight,” the prince says, somewhat muffled from behind the wing.

“Why not?”

“I can’t… travel at night.”

Peter lifts an eyebrow, currently at the dragon because she’s — well, Five O’Clock did call her Rosie so Peter assumes she’s a she… unless she prefers other pronouns — the only one who watches Peter. The grumble, this time, sounds more like a sigh. In fact, smoke comes out of her nostrils— smoke that’s directed right at the current inhabitant under her wing.

“Hey!” He coughs, plumes of smoke swirling up like they do when one flutters a fan or a hand. “You’re supposed to be on my side!” Grumble. “Yeah, I know I’ve been holed up here for the past twenty years.” Grumble. “No, can’t do that. No way. Tell him to go away. I need my beauty sleep.”

Peter’s hands prop themselves into his hips. Nobody told him that the prince was a Drama Queen.

“Look, if we travel even half the night, we can find a place to rest and we’ll get you back to the castle in no time at all.”

“There are creatures out there.”

“And you know how to use those swords better than me. And I have my own tricks up my sleeves. I don’t see the problem.”

“Please.”

It’s small and not at all an act. Peter takes a step forward, but the dragon growls, pulling the wing towards herself. It looks like he won’t be able to do anything tonight. He sighs and looks up at the stars.

“Where am I supposed to sleep?” he says, seeing as he’s going to have to spend the night there.

“There’s a room at the top of the tower.”

“I’m not sleeping in your room.”

Moments pass. “Rosie has a free wing.”

Peter opens his mouth to argue, but his curiosity pulls it shut and he steps forward just as he hears the displacement of air behind him.

“Hey, why’d you leave— whoa, big… dragon. Big…” Miles says, Peter B. in tow when Peter turns around.

The dragon grumbles in warning at the new intruders, head lifting and puffing out smoke.

“Who is he? Your kid?” the prince asks from behind the wing and Peter swallows wrong, falling prey to a fit of coughs.

“I’ve a father waiting at home to give me the lecture of my life, thanks a bunch, but no thanks, I don’t need another one.” 

It sounds a lot like Miles doesn’t take kindly to have father figures pushed on him. Maybe he’s reaching that rebellious stage teens usually go through? Then again, Peter never went through one. Being alone probably was what kept him from having one.

And wait, that sounded like he actually considered himself a father figure. He shakes his head vehemently. Too soon.  _ Way  _ too soon.

“Why are you here guys? Didn’t the wizard— undo the curse?”

Miles shakes his head. “No, he said he’d need three days to prepare— whatever wizards prepare for that.”

“Are you okay here?” Peter B. asks, probably looking behind Peter at the dragon.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Talked to the prince. We’ll be heading back first thing in the morning.”

“Aw, no spectacular dragon battle?” Miles quips, dejection thick in his voice.

“As you can see, Miles, there’s no fight going on,” Peter B. says, pointing with his hand at everything in front of them. Including Peter.

“But I wanted to help your younger clone here slay a dragon. I mean, when will I ever get to do that? There are no dragons in —.” 

“There wasn’t a bunch of spider people either, but you saw how that one went.”

Miles’ shoulders slump. Peter feels sorry for the kid, but Peter B. seems to have the situation under control when he sighs as if in defeat.

“The wizard said that there was a troll not far from here who was giving his gnomes trouble when they go collect the post he receives. Wanna—”

“YES!” he jumps up. “Let’s go! Bye Peter’s younger clone, nice meeting you!”

Peter snorts and shakes his head, but waves as Miles shoots a line at the highest peak on the mountain face and Peter B. salutes him before following his friend. 

His hand falls and he looks out towards the other side of the precipice at the dark and moving treeline of the Enchanted Woods and waits. Even if the wind coming down from the mountains is freezing, the vapors lifting lazily from the fire river below are enough to keep Peter from shivering.

He waits still.

“Did you leave, Spidey?” Five O’Clock’s voice jars him out of his formless thoughts.

He looks over his shoulder. There’s only the shadow of something round reflected on the dragon’s front leg as the moon shines down on them. The warm yellow-orange glow coming from below might play tricks on Peter’s eyes. His spider has long since retreated back so now he only has his human eyes to rely on.

“Spidey?” he says, amusement filling his voice.

“Spider-Man is too much of a mouthful.”

Peter chuckles and looks back over the precipice. Nothing.

“Who are you waiting for?”

He scrutinizes the horizon once before he sighs and admits defeat. He’s out there, Peter knows. At least he only disappeared and was not attacked or— other nasty stuff. And Peter knew that he wouldn’t stick around for long. Still, he couldn’t help the hope that flourished within him at the thought that the foul mouth would return.

They’re not friends. Far from it. But he’s been pestering Peter for enough months that Peter got used to him almost always being around. And— if Peter’s really honest, he things that Razor Face likes being in his company even if he’d never admit to such a thing.

Unlikely friends, hm?

He turns and makes his way towards the dragon.

That might be one way of putting it.

“You neve told me your name,” Peter says as he offers the dragon a smile and she lifts her other wing to accommodate Peter.

There’s a long pause. “Deadpool.”

“Deadpool?” Peter snorts, positive that’s not his real name. “What kind of name is that?”

“Well, at least I’m not called a combination of an insect and man.”

Peter chuckles. “If you want to be precise, spiders are arachnids.”

“Insects.”

He shakes his head and gives up arguing. For now.

“So are you a knight?” Deadpool asks.

“No.”

Pause. “Then why are  _ you _ here and not the— dude that wants to rescue me?”

Peter opens his mouth, but closes it, frowning. That’s a good question. And even if Peter has his suspicions about why Ajax does this, he doesn’t have any proof— and he might make the prince refuse to come with him and then if he returns empty handed that manipulative lord will tell everyone— 

No. Better to keep his theories to himself.

He glances out at the dragon’s— Rosie’s sleeping head.

Even if that means deceiving an innocent man? Is his identity that important to him?

It is.

It has been.

It was?

He takes off his mask to scrub his face as if he can scrub clean all those muddled thoughts and feelings.

“Hey, still there?” Deadpool chirps from the other side.

“Yeah,” Peter croaks.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just— tired, I guess.”

“Then you better sleep. I’ll keep watch over you two. No worries.” Then lower, “yeah, sure, as if goblins and dark faeries will dare attack us. Pfft. Let them try. My katanas are poison to them. Mhm, yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah, I know last time I almost got chopped to bits. No fucking way. Not gonna let him—”

And Peter falls asleep to the prince’s weird mutterings. Seriously, there’s something going on with him if he talks as if there’s somebody else present. But he’s too tired to give too much thought to that.

*** 

“How long have you been imprisoned here?” Peter asks as they both wave Rosie off from the other side of the precipice.

Deadpool told him that Rosie doesn’t really belong to him, and that she’s been by his side to protect him. It didn’t surprise Peter that much when he said that she belongs to the wizard and that he gave Deadpool the dragon after he tap danced.

“Think the old man has a leg fetish or something,” he had said, his handsome face beaming with the smile he was sporting.

But now they’re on their own. Peter still expects him to turn tail. After all, he’s taking Deadpool to marry a stranger. How stupid can that be? He’s still fighting those conflicting emotions that arose last night. The nasty thing is that he still isn’t anywhere near putting order to them. More than that, they seem to become more and more muddy and layered.

He longs for the quiet and simplicity of his cottage. Just him, his garden and his inventions. What more could he ask for?

“Hm,” Deadpool considers as they both walk alongside the edge of the Enchanted Woods.

No way are they going through it, even if taking this roundabout way will have them reach Ajax’s castle in about five days if the weather is by their side.

“Think it’s twenty now.”

“Twenty years?” Peter blinks behind his mask, adjusting his satchel.

Deadpool nods.

“How did you— no, never mind.”

He smirks. “On tree roots and faery dust.”

Peter shoulder-checks him out of some crazy instinct he seems to be developing around this stupidly handsome man. They both freeze as even Deadpool, muscly enough to withstand such a half-hearted push from Peter, takes about two steps to the side to not fall. He didn’t expect that from Peter.

An apology is ready to take off.

“So that’s how it is.” The smirk is back and he goes to shoulder-check Peter, but he sees the move from miles away and easily avoids it. “Nimble on your feet, huh?” 

There’s no way the smirk becomes even more pointed, more mischievous and playful. But it’s happening, and Peter’s brain is offline as his body moves on its own accord to avoid Deadpool’s hands that are trying to snatch him.

They do this dance for a while, Peter having no trouble at all being just a scant inch away from Deadpool’s hand.

“Are you even trying?” Peter says, feeling his mouth curve and his heart grow with a sort of fluffy, cottony feeling that seems to take residence in his chest.

“You little—” He lunges, but Peter twirls right out of his arm’s reach, amusement growing.

Peter doesn’t follow Deadpool’s legs, that would be distracting, but instead he keeps his gaze firmly on his eyes— which are equally distracting because he sees the moment when they turn from playful to something more serious and determined.

It makes Peter put more effort into not letting himself be caught, letting the prince chase him in circles. Until his foot steps on a dry branch, the snap echoing off of the ravine at his back, and he wobbles where he stands, threatening to lose his balance. He’s prepared to shoot his webs, but a hand grabs the front of his shirt and vest and pulls him back on his feet.

“That was close,” Peter says, looking behind him at the curved slope of dry earth.

“Caught you,” Deadpool sing-songs a shit-eating grin splitting his face.

Peter blinks. “Fine, you win,” he says, shaking his head. He all but forgot about the little game Peter started.

Deadpool’s fist lingers in his shirt, and the intense gaze only makes Peter realize the handful of inches in height difference between them.

“You’ve black eyes,” he says after a while.

Peter frowns a bit. “No. They’re brown, actually.” Deadpool hums and slowly releases him, half turning in the direction they’re heading. “It’s the light,” Peter mutters, rearranging his clothes.

“Let’s go,” Deadpool says, throwing him a sideways glance.

Peter is battling with the confusing emotions inside him as they make it to another ravine through which a river flows.

“Hm, if we follow the river all the way, we can pass right through the woods and get out on the other side in a couple of days.”

Peter lifts an eyebrow as his gaze follows the river down until it curves to the left and disappears behind the thick treeline. 

“Are you su— what are you doing?” he almost screeches.

Deadpool blinks, a few steps away from Peter, caught in the act of taking his clothes off, one foot mid-air as he’s discarding his black pants on top of his burgundy shirt and the two swords. He’s only in his underpants that are definitely two sizes too small because they don’t even cover  _ half  _ of his thighs. Peter is unable to stop taking all of  _ that  _ in. The various groups of muscles, the sun playing off the dips and twists on his bodies.  _ That  _ damn shadow on the inside of his  _ thick  _ thighs.

Please Lord, or whoever’s out there,  _ please  _ let him finish this journey without major incidents. Without him doing something  _ stupid. _

Like start flirting with the prince. Or— or touch him out of nowhere.

_ Shit.  _ He wants to touch now. Everywhere on that expanse of skin. Look at the slightly tanned canvas! Look! It’s there for the taking. It’s there for Peter to draw innumerable figures on!

It’s— 

“Haven’t had a bath in over a week. I stink like seven kinds of swamps,” Deadpool says as he steps gingerly over the smooth stones. 

Peter cannot stop staring at that broad back, at the way his shoulder blades shift and dip under the skin. This is  _ not  _ happening to him. What is he? Fifteen and sporting a boner at the mere sight of  _ a naked ankle?  _

Granted, there’s more than a naked ankle in his field of vision. There’s a  _ whole lot  _ of nakedness. 

Deadpool dips his toes into the water before deeming it the right temperature to canon-ball jump in.

With a loud cheer.

_ “Fuck!  _ It’s freezing! Hey Spidey, join me! It’s good once you get used to it.” He waves Peter over.

But Peter is too frozen on the spot by the development to answer immediately. 

“Heck, why am I so surprised?” he mutters to himself, shaking his head. 

He’s been in that tower for twenty years, didn’t he say that already? Twenty long years with only— what? — a dragon and the occasional magical creature to stave off boredom? It’s impossible not go a bit funny in— but Peter’s been alone for the past six years. Well, maybe that doesn’t even compare to what the prince went through. He still gets visits from his uncle and aunt almost weekly, and then there are the guards, his friends— Razor Face. He’s not alone even if he likes to think of himself that way.

There is always someone he can turn to if he needs help.

But Deadpool— he’s only had Rosie by his side. Or at least that’s what Peter assumes. He didn’t mention any other name. But they haven’t talked all that much since yesterday, have they?

Peter sits down on a large stone, letting his feet cool off in the running, cold water as he watches Deadpool lean back against the current and enjoy the rush.

“Don’t you miss your dragon?” Peter finds himself asking, chin cupped in his palm as his elbow digs gently into the top of his knee.

“What was that?” Wade sits up.

The water reaches his chest— lapping at his nipples. Peter forces his gaze back up to that chiseled face. The five o’clock shadow is more like six o’clock now.

“Your dragon. Don’t you miss her?”

He shrugs, looking down at his hands wading lazily beneath the surface of the water.

“I knew she’d go back once someone came for me.”

That isn’t an answer, but maybe that is exactly the answer Peter was looking for.

“You mean nobody came for you in the past two decades?” He straightens up because he can’t believe that.

Deadpool snorts. “There have been some. Rosie drove them away. Or burned their asses off.” He chuckles.

“Why?”

He frowns. “They picked up a fight with her.”

“I picked one with her, too.”

He opens his mouth to, probably, argue, but then he closes it. 

“Maybe you’re special.”

Now Peter snorts. “Yeah, right. I’m no knight or prince or any kind of royalty. I’m simply— me.”

Deadpool cants his head as he looks at Peter with that frown still etched between his eyebrows. He doesn’t say anything for a while and Peter feels as if the man’s trying to peer into his soul.

“So it’s been just you and her ever since you came here,” he says to distract the prince from staring so intensely at Peter.

He’s never felt comfortable being under such rigorous scrutiny. It always made him think that his face or body would betray his thoughts. He forgets he has a mask right now, though.

A few salmon fish jump out of the water, passing by Deadpool’s head without touching him. He half-heartedly tries to catch them.

“Nah. There’ve been other who came and stayed for a while. All kinds of creatures. Death, too.”

“Death?”

Deadpool nods. “She’s dramatic like that. Think it’s because she’s been living alone in the mountains for so long. But then she found me and she took a liking to me. But that was because—” He cuts himself off abruptly and splashes some water as if to disperse the thoughts.

“Because?”

Deadpool glances at Peter. “Do you know why I’ve been thrown into the tower and denied to return home?”

“Um, sort of? You have some kind of curse?”

He nods slowly, gaze falling down on his blurry hands underwater. “I touched a dragon egg when I was twelve.” His hands come up near the rushing surface, fingertips emerging for a bit. “No human can touch such an egg. It scorches through you and incinerates you from the inside-out. But—” Now his arms emerge as he keeps his gaze fixed on his hands. 

His lips move, but with all the bird songs around, the wind rustling the leaves and the gurgling rush of the water Peter doesn’t hear anything. Without even thinking about it, he jumps to his feet in the river to get closer.

_ “Fuck,  _ it’s cold! What was that?” he says, ignoring the cold current stealing away his thighs’ warmth.

Deadpool grins, almost catching a flying salmon. “Told ya it’s freezing. It’s coming straight from the mountains.” He throws his thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of the mountains.

Peter trudges out of the river and onto dry land to let the sun rays warm his legs. 

“You better take them off and let them dry,” Deadpool points out helpfully from the middle of the river and Peter sighs, knowing that he’s right.

He takes his pants off and wrings them so that the worst of the water drips down before he flicks and spreads them over the smooth stone he sat on.

“I’m hungry, “ Deadpool says, “let’s eat!”

“I still have some cheese and a few apple—”

“I want fish,” he interrupts, his head moving from one side to the other as his gaze most probably follows the salmon swimming upstream. It’s that time of the year.

“Then I’ll go find some branches to make a fire.”

Not that Deadpool seems to hear him as he’s too focused on catching their lunch. Well, whatever floats the prince’s boat. It’s been a while since Peter’s had salmon, so if he can catch those elusive fish without a net, then Peter’s more than happy to make the fire.

Even if he’s not as comfortable walking around in only his off-white shorts. He feels exposed even if he still has his vest, shirt, and mask on.

It’s easy to gather branches without venturing behind the treeline and in no time he’s blowing down on the smoke coming from the branch, keeping his stones ready in case it needs more sparks. 

Deadpool comes just when Peter adds more twigs and dry leaves to stoke the fire. He took on his black pants, but he used his shirt as a bag for transporting the salmon he caught. 

“Lunch is here,” he says, smirking as he sits down and spreads the shirt.

There are at least eight medium-size salmon Peter can count, and a few other, smaller ones.

“That’s a haul.”

“Right?” Deadpool says proudly.

Peter tries to not linger on his wet torso or arms or stomach or neck or jaw. And fails spectacularly because— because— he doesn’t even know why. It’s not like he hasn’t had his fair share of handsome men cross his path. Heck, he’d been ogling some of Ajax’ young and old soldiers when they came down by the river miles away from his home to bathe. 

No, Peter’s not a peeping Tom. He was just passing by. And they were  _ there, on display.  _ Sentence him to death by stoning, but there’s a limit to how much naked skin one can show and have Peter mask indifference to it.

He even had a crush on Harry. Back in the day when he was fourteen and the boy kept pestering him day in, day out. Until MJ came along and they both fell for her mischievous nature. But Peter knew, even at the time when boys were too young to have such thoughts, that he’d never be able to develop more than a crush on them both. And if Peter had a choice, he’d go for men with his eyes closed.

So he leaned more towards liking men — and after the episode with Harry,  _ older men  _ — than women. You know, men that weren’t pushed and pulled so easily by times and what other people said. Men who knew who they were and what they wanted from life.  _ Competent  _ men. Those kinds of men Peter fell for.

But looking at the prince, Peter isn’t sure of what he’s feeling. Attraction, yes. Maybe even the beginnings of a crush. After all, he found it relatively easy to be in his presence and the conversations they’ve had so far had been— easy.

But he isn’t sure he wants more out of this. Heck, he  _ shouldn’t  _ want more from this. He’s just the guide— an unwilling party in a story that will end in marriage. The prince’s marriage, not Peter’s.

It isn’t unheard of for two men or women to marry just to secure the throne or expand territories. Once upon a time, they’ve had a princess marry an ogre and break the curse in a completely different way than anyone in Far Far Away ever expected. It’s part of how royals go about their— sparkly, royal life, he guesses.

And Ajax might be manipulative at worst, downright nasty at best, but he has the noble blood in his veins. What does Peter have flowing in his veins? The blood of an inventress and that of a pirate. Both missing from his life since he was seven. It’s been fifteen years now, and he got used to the idea that he’s never going to see them again.

He’d still like to meet them if it’s at all possible, but he’s in no hurry to do so. His aunt and uncle provided a warm, loving home for Peter. So at this point it’s mere curiosity to put faces to Mother and Father. Because his aunt and uncle did everything his parents couldn’t— wouldn’t.

No. He’s not going down that path again. Not now. Now he has other pressing matters on his hands.

“Heeeey? Ground to Spidey. You there?” Deadpool snaps his fingers in front of Peter and he blinks, jolting back. “Welcome back, Spidey. Where did you go?”

He shakes his head and brings a hand to his face— only to touch his mask. He wants to take it off, but he hesitates.

“Sorry. Got lost in thought.”

“Could see that. What’s eating at you?”

“Nothing.” He flutters a hand dismissively.

Deadpool hums as he thrusts his stick into a fish he picked up before thrusting it into the ground near Peter’s at the perfect angle for the fire to lick at it without burning it.

They eat everything Deadpool caught and Peter’s so full at the end that he needs ten minutes to even begin contemplating standing up. The weather turns cloudy and the wind cold as the sun is covered by light grey clusters of clouds. Deadpool has been ambling about, dressed again and with his two swords secured on his back by a simple leather strap that forms an H on his chest and an X on his back. He’s been busy putting out the fire and generally covering their tracks while scouting the area.

Peter doesn’t quite understand why he feels the need to do that because they aren’t on the run and nothing followed them, but he lets him be as Peter wills his stomach to stop giving him such a hard time.

“We should find shelter,” Deadpool says right as Peter’s turning around.

He doesn’t jolt, but his stomach squeezes with that kind of anticipation. So he isn’t the only one light on his feet. He wonders how much more there is to the prince.

“Yeah, we should.”

Instead of Peter being the guide, Deadpool takes the initiative and guides them alongside the river. Peter’s not as miffed as he expected himself to be, rather, he’s curious to learn more about this person who he still can’t define. Or put in a box. It’s not like he likes doing that, but his brain goes there without thinking, even though he’s proven time and again that people seldom fit into one box.

“You were talking about the curse you have,” Peter says after a while, attention going from the small and large stones on the river bank to the prince at his side. 

He grunts.

“You said you found a dragon egg.”

Another grunt.

Peter weighs his next words. Maybe he should be tactful about it, since it might be something that comes too close to being seen as insensitive prying. But Peter’s gamble with tact is always on a ratio of one-out-of-three.

“What were you cursed with?”

Deadpool stops in his tracks and Peter turns to face him, two steps in front of Deadpool.

“Does it matter?” he says softly, almost as if he doesn’t want to say the words.

It doesn’t. Not really. Peter won’t be a presence in the prince’s life once he takes him to Ajax. Whatever they say and do on the journey will mean nothing later on. Maybe just a memory for Peter to call upon or pester him at odd hours of the day and night.

“It doesn’t. But I want to know.”

“Why?” Now his eyes meet Peter’s behind the mask. “So you can be prepared for whatever monster lurks behind this face?”

His eyes widen, not at all what he intended by asking that. “No, of course not.”

“Really?” The prince advances on Peter. Peter stands his ground. He’s scant inches from Peter, and he has to look up a bit to maintain eye contact. “Brave words for someone who doesn’t know how nasty curses are.”

Peter opens his mouth to counter argue, but he’s distracted by the shadows coiling in Deadpool’s eyes, the way his features darken as if the curse might come out at any moment. Deadpool sighs and walks away.

“Wait.” Peter has to jog to catch up with the prince’s long strides. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

But Deadpool’s feature are closed off and impenetrable. 

“Would you stop for a bit and listen?”

He doesn’t even meet Peter’s gaze when Peter’s forced to walk backwards to try to catch his attention and soon he surpasses Peter, marching on as if he’s charging into a battle.

Peter sighs heavily and shoots a line from his right wrist that sticks to Deadpool’s leather strap and pulls with enough force to have the prince fall back on his ass with a surprised ‘oof’. Peter comes to stand at his side, lifting the web that’s still connecting them.

“Do you think I was born with this? Or that it’s some kind of trait I found out about some day?” 

Deadpool’s eyes are wide and his whole face is stunned into silence. Peter finds it ridiculous for a moment, considering that this is how he made his entrance, but he’s also reminded of the fact that Deadpool had been too focused on protecting the dragon instead of paying attention to how Peter got there.

“This,” Peter points towards the web, “is the result of faery magic and a spider. I have to live with this and what it comes with every day for the rest of my life. It’s true it’s not the result of a curse, but it comes close to it. I’m different from my friends and my family. I’m different, and I can’t change that. Do you think it’s easy to be different in a world that likes conformity?”

Something shifts on Deadpool’s face. “Why do you think I’ve been in that tower for so long? Who wants a cursed prince in their house?”

Peter blinks and almost relents, but he doesn’t want this to be over. They’re finally communicating, even if it’s vying towards getting into a shouting match.

“The lord of my land, it seems,” Peter says it like a spiteful comeback.

Deadpool scoffs and looks at the river.

“Does he—” the prince starts, but stops and swallows as if he’s trying to put back the words that escaped. He’s not meeting Peter’s gaze. “Does this lord really want me there?”

Peter’s not sure what to say to that when the words come on such a quiet tone of voice. He takes the prince in, his strong arms propped atop his bent knees, his face mostly turned towards the river. He’d like to see his eyes, glimpse the depths of them and gauge what the prince is feeling. But he doesn’t need a visual, does he? Deadpool’s voice tells Peter everything he needs to know.

“I believe he does,” he says just as quietly.

Did he lie to the prince because he knows that that’s what Deadpool wants to hear?

Or did he lie because telling him the truth means that the prince might make a run for it?

But he’s been free all along. The dragon didn’t seem to imprison him, so Deadpool might not have been the prisoner Peter expected him to be. And looking at him he’s certainly not the frail, waiting to be saved prince Ajax presumed he was.

“Why didn’t you go back to your home?” Peter finds himself asking while he crouches down, arms folded over each other on his knees.

Deadpool snorts and gathers his knees closer to his chest. “What would’ve been the point? They put me here. Going back without breaking the curse wouldn’t have solved anything.”

Peter studies half of his face. “Then why not go somewhere else? Start a new life. Forget—”

“That I’m a prince and I have a duty towards my people?” His eyes bore into Peter’s and he’s left bereft of any kind of reply he might have had poised on his lips. “Is that what you believe I should’ve done? Is your lord that protected from the rest of the kingdom that he’s not aware of the Not Quite Far Kingdom pushing at our borders? Or how villages after villages near the south are falling prey to famine and sickness if not to the enemies?”

His features transform from the placid, lost prince to a man who’s at the end of his wits, riddled with frustration and straining to jump into a battle that’s not even here. 

Peter studies him, trying to figure out the best thing to say that won’t have Deadpool go off. But just as he settles on something, Deadpool’s head darts up, sniffing the air, and before Peter can ask, a strange noise begins in earnest at his back, not unlike the sound a lit fuse on a firework makes.

He doesn’t manage to turn his head and look for the source of that sound because Deadpool jumps to his feet, grabs Peter’s wrist and drags them right into the woods they’re not supposed to enter.

***

Just Wade’s luck to cross paths with a Yiga member. At least that one was a Footsoldier and not a Blademaster. Those— those are nasty bitches out to windcleave Wade’s head off his shoulders. Get it? Windcleave? From the weapon they use, the mighty Windcleaver? He actually managed to steal one once, but he broke it when he fought Death— before the hanky-panky. All that strength and power was bound to make sexy sparkles sizzle between them.

Now he’s trying to outrun a Footsoldier, but he knows that they can appear and disappear at will wherever they want. But only in the woods. They’re bound to these woods. Wade almost got bound to them, too. 

Case in point, the Footsoldier’s evil laughter goes in and out of ear shot as he pops up and out, hot on their trails.

Spidey’s harsh breath is loud in the still woods, as are their pounding feet. Deadpool’s own are silent. After years of practicing stealth, you learn a thing or two.

“Dead— who was that?” Spidey asks the expected question. Wade doesn’t relent the bruising hold he has on his wrist as he ducks and swerves through the woods. The sunlight hasn’t changed yet from the midday blaze, so they still must be in  _ their _ territory. “Why are we running? I can fight that.”

A snort escapes Wade even if he’s trying to mask their direction by getting lighter and lighter on his feet. Not Spidey. 

_ He runs like a troll.  _

**At least he doesn’t smell like one.**

Hey, no. Trolls can be friendly and nice, too. Just because the majority of them are assholes doesn’t mean that everyone is like that.

**Pfft. Yeah, says the one who almost bedded that troll-ess once.**

In his defense, she was making goo-goo eyes at him.

_ And Rosie singed her beautiful locks of swamp hair. She’d have made a  _ mess  _ in bed. _

**Yuck, all that mud, and mushrooms growing between her toes.**

No judging people for their skin condition!

“You don’t fight a Yiga member, Spidey,” he says, his voice a tad above the sound of the wind slapping their faces. “You try to outrun it at first.”

“But—”

Then a hill hiding a ravine appears and Wade sees their escape as clear as he could see Death’s throat from below. He charges up, his grip even more crushing on Spidey’s surprisingly slender wrist and before his guide has time to realize what they’re about to do, he leaps into a beautiful arc, pulls Spidey to his chest and disappears into thin air.

They emerge at the edge of the meadow, on the other side of the ravine, right behind a wisteria. But he realizes his mistake a second too late as he physically slams Spidey to the ground before the wind cuts a deep arc into the trunk where their bodies were moments ago.

He looks to his right from on top of a dazed Spidey just to see the Blademaster with his Windcleaver ready to slash through Wade like his katanas slash through concrete.

He has no choice but to fight the Blademaster, even if he always got out of such a fight with more wounds than victories.

**But who was the one who defeated that lazy master of theirs? Us!**

_ Yeah, and we barely got out in one piece. What do you think will happen now that not one but two members saw us? The entire fucking clan will be upon us in no time. _

**Psh, live a little, White!**

As it happens, the ‘live a little’ part rests upon Wade’s shoulders.

“Stay down, Spidey,” he says, not taking his eyes off the Blademaster. 

***

Their enemy is as bulky as Deadpool is, though taller by a head and a half, and not all of that bulkiness seems to be because of the armor their opponent wears: black under suit with red protections in various places across their bodies. 

Peter crouches, ready to jump into the battle should Deadpool need the help.

He doesn’t as much see Deadpool unsheathing his katanas as he hears the soft glide of metal against hardened leather. They circle each other, and Peter pays attention to Deadpool’s focused features, the smoothness of his forehead, the smather of stubbles across his jaw, chin and upper lip, the relaxed line of his mouth, but the pulsing vein across the side of his neck, before he moves towards taking their stance in. 

Deadpool’s enemy keeps his slim sword in front of him, at stomach level, both hands gripping it. Deadpool, on the other hand, has one sword aloft, pointed towards his enemy while the other one is kept at chest level, Peter would say that it’s in defense, but it looks more offense. 

He meets Deadpool’s gaze only once, and Peter feels the stirrings of something deep within himself. Something that matches the shadows he sees in Deadpool’s eyes. 

Peter tenses, the stirrings coiling around themselves, snarling. Deadpool attacks.

***

His back collides with the trunk of a tree, smashing it.

**Wasn’t the dragon supposed to hone your skills? You’re duller and slower than when they first found you wandering the woods.**

Just warming up, babycheeks!

He spits the blood from the lower lip he unconsciously bit into at the moment of impact and focuses his entire attention on the Blademaster. This requires a change of tactics.

He lets his worries melt from his shoulders. Exhale. Heartbeat decreases. Inhale. The wind tapers off, the grass and trees lull mid-wave. Everything is perfectly still and calm in his mind and around him. Not even the apple that falls one hundred yards away from him with a squelching thud as it bruises its rotten side against the stone edge disturbs the calm pond that his mind has become. 

Then Wade feels his body become impossibly lightweight, a millisecond faster than the lazy wind, immaterial and when he opens his eyes he’s behind the Blademaster, but the master parries Wade’s first katana, yet the second one slashes across his stomach, which forces the master to retreat. 

***

Peter’s breath catches in his throat, eyes widening behind his mask. One blink Deadpool was ten steps away from his opponent, the next he’s right behind him. How did he  _ do  _ that?

He tenses even more as the parry-riposte dance the two are locked in becomes faster. Deadpool doesn’t give the other time and space to slash the air and send that powerful wind that cut clean through the trunk of an old tree.

But the ninja sees through that and manages more than once to throw Deadpool off his back and employ his deadly technique. Deadpool barely avoids being caught by the wind cuts sent his way, but he’s light on his feet, still. 

No trace of worry or fatigue. 

More than that, if Peter’s any face reader, he’d bet his mask on the fact that Deadpool is actually enjoying himself. The more Deadpool fights the ninja, it seems, the lighter and more agile he becomes, until something only Peter thought was able to do thanks to his abilities happens. 

Deadpool predicts his opponent’s next move a second or two before it happens.

But their skills match each other inch by inch. Peter is hard pressed to see a winner in this fight.

He feels the jitters roiling in the pit of his stomach, his heartbeat drumming in his ears. He wants to act. Now. But he can’t see any opening in the fight.

Then his spider senses go off and his head snaps to the side just in time to see the now familiar sparks. Another one is going to appear.

Peter makes it in time to shoot a line just as another ninja appears, identical in built and clothes to the one Deadpool’s currently engaged with. His webs stick to his right forearm, luckily the one in which the sword is held. He pulls and the moment of surprise is all Peter needs as the ninja loses hold of his sword, flying a few steps away from him.

Peter’s up and acting before he fully forms a plan. The only thought he has is that he mustn’t let the ninja near the sword.

He never fought such agile opponents before. The goblins and the dark faeries don’t compare to these people. Or— creatures. They’re masked like Peter, so he can’t tell if they’re human or something else that took the shape of a human.

And that’s where the issues start showing up. Even without being in possession of his sword, the ninja has no trouble adjusting to Peter’s abilities. Not only that, but he has to duck and jump in a zig-zag formation because little knives are thrown his way, some of them having a red slip of paper attached to them that explode upon impact.

He’s thrown off-course because there are too many of those and the ninja keeps popping in and out of his field of vision. How does one fight against such an enemy?

He can’t even risk a glance at Deadpool’s fight because that would probably mean sure death for Peter.

As he lands on the side of a trunk and looks for the ninja, he finds him bending down to pick up his sword. Peter’s chances of winning have just dwindled to zero, if he’s honest with himself.

But his enemy turns his back to Peter, and as Peter follows his line of sight his chest squeezes painfully.

He won’t make it in time.

The ninja lifts his sword.

Anger surges through Peter like a scorching blaze, charring his insides and making that coiling something want to latch onto the blaze and surge forward with it, but he doesn’t have time for that.

He won’t make it in time!

Deadpool’s thrown back by his opponent, which places him right between the two ninjas. He doesn’t realize there’s another one at his back.

He won’t make it in time dammit!

Peter’s opponent slashes his sword in the air and Peter lunges the last few yards, hoping his bone legs give him the necessary push he needs.

The wind cuts him from above the collarbone to the opposing hip.

He made it in time.


	3. Chapter 3

***

His katanas cut an X through the wind cut that comes from the Baldemaster, a trick he learned not long ago that nullifies the blow, but just then a shadow attracts his attention and he looks up above his shoulder. Spidey’s back is to him, mid-air, his fancy bone legs kinda spread out, before he makes a strange sound, a mix between a punched out breath and a whimper, and he crashed to the ground. That’s when he sees the straight gash maring his front, the off white shirt blooming red, even as it parts from the clean cut.

**… what the fuck?**

He sees the second Blademaster as he slashes the air with his Windcleaver as if to complete a move.

_ Oh no. Fool! You fool why did you— _

It takes Wade but a moment to think and he’s at Peter’s side faster than either masters can compute, pulling his shoulders up and disappearing into thin air before they can act.

He appears by the side of a creek, Spidey unmoving in his arms.

“Shit shit shit, please don’t be late, please don’t be late.”

Voracious, unfamiliar panic claws its way up like a myriad of insects looking for a way out and Wade has to swallow to keep it from taking control over him. He needs to think. _ Think, dammit! _

**Uh-oh. Red alert! Red alert! All units prepare to raise all the barriers. Raise all the barriers. Quarantine is needed! Red alert!**

_ Shut up, Yellow, and think of something! _

**Something? What else are we supposed to think about when we see ** ** _this?_ **

This being the lifeless body of a man who entered Wade’s life out of nowhere and refused to leave without him.

He picks Spidey as gingerly as he can and carries him bridal style behind the small waterfall in the stone outcroppings, making sure they weren’t followed. His ninja abilities can never take him more than a few hundred feet away from one place. 

The noise of the waterfall is jarring Wade’s senses because he can’t hear enemies approach, but unfortunately he doesn’t have time to worry about them when Spidey’s blood is seeping into his shirt. 

There are four pools of iridescent blue water painting the dark cave walls in shimmering shadows deeper inside the cave. The sound of the waterfall falls to a background thrum, blocked in some ways by the curve the passage takes before revealing the pools. Wade kneels on one knee by the closest one and places Spidey’s limp body gingerly into it. The moment the water touches his wound, Spidey hisses at the same time as Wade winces.

“Where—” Spidey murmurs, still not quite there.

“Safe. You’re hurt,” Wade says low, trying to see Spidey’s eyes, but the mask hides them in the shadows. “These are healing pools. It’ll help speed your recovery.”

“Don’t need,” he mumbles, “I can heal just fine.”

“Not from this wound, no.”

He slowly and gingerly pulls the shirt off his shoulders and down his arms so that now he has a half naked Spidey in a body of water that makes the younger man’s skin glow a sickly blue. Spidey is already white as a sheet. Dark wisps of blood float above and around his torso and Wade only hopes the water will heal that. It takes no time to see the glow of Spidey’s veins around the wound, like roots dispersing from it, as the healing water works it magic.

“Uh, you’d be better off without the mask.”

“What?” Spidey almost jumps up from the pool, but Wade’s hands are still on his shoulder, keeping him steady.

“The water calms you, and once you relax you’ll fall asleep. It’s not deep, but the water will cover most of your face and with a mask…”

Spidey is silent for a long time and Wade begins to think that he fell back into unconsciousness.

“No, mask stays on,” he says in the end, slurry and like he can barely keep himself awake.

The holes for his mouth, nose and eyes remain untouched by the water and Wade’s struck with the intense desire to look behind the mask.

It didn’t bother him before. He’s the first to shrug and accept a wide range of quirks from the funniest to the strangest ones. But since their little dance off and not long ago with Spidey basically using his own body to protect Wade from being unalived he’s even more curious about the kind of person that hides behind that black mask.

His fingers twitch as he becomes aware of the fact that they’re inches away from it. This is becoming messy. It shouldn’t matter what this man did or didn’t do for Wade. They’ll part ways in no time and Wade’s never going to see him again. So what good will seeing his face do to Wade? Isn’t it better to simply have this black mask in his memories that will fade with time?

That’s the kind of life Wade has outside of the ruins. No meddling with commoners. This isn’t a fairy tale. If he marries, he will do so for tactical and political advantage and not for love.

More than a fairytale-esque love, his people need a king who can protect them. And Spidey reminded Wade of that.

**… is this a good time to say that we successfully quarantined those nasty feelings?**

_ We might as well take out the flamethrowers. We have another bout of feelings on our hands that need to be killed. _

**Hey! We didn’t kill those other feelings. Just pushed them into a corner and sang them to sleep. We’re not brutes!**

_ We’ll have to be with these feelings. _

He stands up, fists white-knuckled at his sides and leaves the cave to scout the area and hunt something for dinner.

***

The floating sensation doesn’t subside when he blinks his eyes open to be greeted by a bluish ceiling on which shadows play. He flails a bit because there’s nothing solid against his back and then sits up, an arm flung over the edge of the pool he’s in. His toes wiggle experimentally and he finds the water warm and soothing— and no shirt on him. His hand automatically touches his face.

A relieved sigh ushers from his dry lips when he feels the smoothness of his leather mask.

He doesn’t look far for his shirt, neatly folded on the uneven stone edge right at the end of his fingers.

“Do you always fling yourself in the face of danger?” Deadpool asks from somewhere to his left and Peter jolts because he didn’t sense him at all. “Or is it a favorite pastime, because I gotta tell you, it’s the nastiest pastime you could’ve come up with.”

He looks around again, but nothing human-shaped reveals itself in the other three pools at Peter’s back or around the different boulders sticking out of the cave walls.

“When needs must,” Peter says without much inflection and hoists himself up and out of the pool, feeling the water sluicing down his skinny torso.

It leaves him and his trousers dry, as if he hadn't been soaking into the pool for who knows how long. There’s no other source of light than the bright blue of the water. From the advantage of his height, he can make out a leg a little ways off to his left, in the crook between a massive boulder and the wall. He can’t see more than his bent leg, the rest of Deadpool’s body is hidden in shadows.

“Means you’ve been doing this for a while.”

Oddly enough, there’s no emotion in Deadpool’s voice and that ticks Peter off in an almost unnerving way. He bends and pulls the shirt over his arms, just to see the black criss-crossings of a slim leather thread.

“You sewed my shirt,” he states, still staring at the almost perfect criss-crossings, even though it slashes from his collarbone to his hip. He peers back into the shadows, trying to see Deadpool’s face, but to no avail. “Thank you.”

He hears movement, but can’t see what kind, and that’s when he becomes aware of the dark brown cloth a little ways from him on which two apples and half of some roasted animal sit.

“How long was I out?” Peter asks and kneels on one knee to touch the meat. It’s cold.

“A while.”

He mutters a curse under his breath.

“Eat,” Deadpool instructs mildly. “The healing water might’ve closed your wound, but you still need strength.” 

“Did you—”

“I already did,” Deadpool confirms, and Peter bites into an apple and then rips a chunk out of the thigh.

If his taste buds don’t lie to him, it’s rabbit he’s eating. His stomach comes to life then, as if it lay dormant and numb until food hit Peter’s tongue.

“This is delicious!” he says around a big mouthful of meat and apple. He always liked the union between meat, rabbit especially, and apples that haven’t ripened yet, but were on the right side of being a bit sour. 

“So you’ve been doing the self-sacrificing stint for a while, hm?” Deadpool repeats and Peter swallows, peering in his direction.

“I help where there’s a need.” He shrugs.

“You were almost killed,” he throws, quiet and tight as if it costs him to say those words.

Peter stares, roasted thigh momentarily forgotten in his hand. “First, you were busy fighting one of those— whatever they were—”

“Blademasters.”

“That. And secondly, between me and you, you’re the one that has more value.”

A pebble catches Peter square in his chest. “Ouch! What the hell was that?” he says indignantly, rubbing at the spot. He’s sure a bruise will bloom in a bit.

“Did you forget that you’re meant to take me to this lord of yours? How can I do that if you’re dead?”

“It was a moment’s decision, okay? You were in danger. I acted. Why aren’t you thankful I saved your life? In these situations you say your gratitude and let the matter drop.” 

“You were supposed to think about your life!”

“And let you die? Not as long as I breathe!” he says that with so much spite, as if it’s beyond what Peter can think of.

Silence follows, time in which Peter cools off and realizes how that sounds. He bites into the thigh with more vengeance than necessary.

“I can’t die,” Deadpool murmurs, and Peter’s head shoots up.

“What was that?”

“I can’t die,” he grits out.

Peter stares at the shadows, trying to figure out if it’s code for something or he misheard. How many times can one ask a prince to repeat himself before his head rolls?

“You… can’t die?” he says slowly, testing the waters.

Deadpool hums an affirmative.

“Will you tell me what you mean by that? Or am I supposed to just take it at face value and never ask again?”

An angry huff from the shadows. “In any other circumstances you’d be advised to do the latter, but—”

He falls silent after that. Peter finishes his roasted thigh and sits with his back to the wall, playing with the second apple.

“You never did finish telling me about your curse,” Peter says half-heartedly. A prompt, but also maybe an offer to change the subject.

A long sigh from Deadpool, both legs stretching outside the shadows. 

“The dragon egg did incinerate me inside-out, but something must have gone wrong because I didn’t die. No, I forged some kind of bond with the dragon in that egg or there was some other kind of magic at play there because I— took something from it, just like the egg took something from me.”

“What did it take?”

“I took its healing powers,” Deadpool says instead. “I can’t die no matter what mortal wound I am inflicted with. You can chop me to pieces and my body would grow back.” A humorless chuckle. “I’m that kinda monster. So whenever you’re angry and want to let steam off by chopping something to bits, call me. Won’t promise I’ll be there in a jiffy, but I’ll certainly hear your call.”

Peter stares at the shadows. It’s not the most horrendous thing he heard or saw, but the off feeling coming from Deadpool’s self-deprecating words is like a rusty old knife trying to cut through his stomach.

“That’s why,” the prince’s voice drops to the cold tone from before, “you should’ve let that blow hit me.”

“That’s never going to happen.” Peter takes another bite of his apple. 

“Are you an idiot?” Now the anger bleeds into his words, hot and quiet.

Peter throws an unimpressed look at the shadows. He pushes himself up. “The only idiot I can hear right now is you.” He approaches Deadpool.

“Don’t come here!” he says harshly, drawing his legs back into the shadows.

From the advantage of Peter’s height and the change in distance, he can make out a dark silhouette, both legs bent close to Deadpool’s chest.

“Why?” He doesn’t take another step, but he wants to. He wants to, more than anything, bridge the distance between them, touch this irking prince with his mood swings and weird conversations he has with himself.

“Because.”

Unbidden, a small smile touches his lips. “That’s childish.”

Deadpool sniffs. “Well, I _ am _a prince. Entitled to childish behavior and requests. It comes with the whole regalia and royal blood.”

Peter feels his eyes crinkling in the corners. “Really? It’s been two decades since you’ve been attended to. I’d think that royal pompousness wears off.”

Deadpool snorts. “As if. The alone time only intensified it.” He sniffs with all the air of a noble prince whose ass never touched a hard surface.

Peter courches, forearms folding over his knees before he props his chin atop them, his full attention on the apparently pretentious prince.

“What’s so funny?” the prince asks, and it’s not as haughty as he probably wanted it to sound.

“Hm? Ah, nothing. Just thinking.”

“You can think facing the other wall.”

Peter chuckles, an odd flutter in his chest. 

“What are you thinking about?” Deadpool asks after a while, going for nonchalance but the curiosity in his voice giving him away.

“Mm, about how much effort you’re trying to put into a mask that doesn’t fit you no matter what you say.”

Deadpool snorts, so un-prince-like. “Who said that I’m _ trying _. This is the real me. Obnoxious, right? Like all those arrogant noble families who walk with their upturned noses and three-feet long sticks up their fat asses.”

Peter laughs without meaning to. “See, this is why that mask doesn’t fit. This is not you.”

“And what’s the basis of that? You’ve known me for— what? — only two days?”

He shrugs, not really being bothered by the short time they’ve spent together. Right now, Peter feels like he knows more about this prince than he did the first time he encountered him.

His hand goes to his collarbone, scratching the beginning of his wound.

“Does it still hurt?” The silhouette moves towards Peter, but he stops right before the edge of the shadows.

“And that’s why the mask doesn’t fit,” Peter says with a lilt in his voice, enjoying this way too much.

“Stop pointing that out.”

“Why? You have a reputation to keep?” He barely manages to say those words without laughing.

“Yes.” Now _ that’s _what haughty sounds like. “Does it hurt?” he repeats, less heat, more worry.

“No, but it’s itching.”

The prince huffs, stubbornly clinging to his royal lineage. “Of course, I know my healing pools.”

He grins at the shadows. “Why do you sit there? What don’t you want me to see?”

The easygoing atmosphere seems to change, dropping to a whispering coldness. Peter frowns, not wanting the walls to go back and keep Peter out. This is the longest conversation they’ve had so far. And Peter got to find out a lot about the prince, and the thrillness Peter feels is not because of that, but because for once in his life he met someone who he can’t place inside any one box. He cannot label the prince no matter how hard he tries.

Peter wants to know more.

“What did it take from you?” he asks instead, when Deadpool isn’t forthcoming with an answer to that. “The dragon egg.” 

The prince is silent for a long time. “My humanity.” Peter opens his mouth because he wants to know more. “But the Fairy Godmother twisted the curse so that I’m normal by day, but once night comes I revert back into— a monster. What about you?”

Peter doesn’t even have time to fully register that bit of information. “Me?”

“You said you’re a half spider because of faerie magic and a spider at the wrong time.” 

“Oh. Yes, that’s true.” He squeezes his knees, feeling incredibly self-conscious right now, as if he’s naked and still has to answer intimate questions. 

“How did it happen?” Deadpool asks.

Peter studies the darkness, letting the silence gather as bits and pieces of memories trickle into his mind. “My aunt and uncle’s cottage was invaded by dark faeries when I was eight. They made a mess of the house. My aunt and uncle tried to protect me, but the faeries weren’t open to negotiate. They struck and I acted on instinct. After that I remember glittering light and a sharp pain. Later I found out that a good faerie brought me back, but when the wand touched me, a spider bit my hand and I absorbed its characteristics.”

“Characteristics? You mean the legs are not the only thing that changes?” 

Peter felt a bit uncomfortable at the excitement in the prince’s voice.

“The eyes, too.”

A dramatic gasp. “I want to see!”

Peter side-glances those annoying shadows. “You show me yours, I show you mine,” he says.

Again, the prince falls silent, and Peter stands up and sits down against the wall at the edge of Wade’s shadow confine. 

“We should turn in,” Deadpool says after a long while.

Peter sighs softly and nods, refusing to look in his direction. It takes him a long time to fall asleep on the hard floor, but he manages. The feeling of something soft and spindly gently treading through his hair trickles in his dreams.

***

Peter is dimly aware that it is improbable for two grown men to luck out so much that they spend the entire day running and fighting what Peter came to know as Blademasters — the bulky, nasty, Windcleaver-wielding Yiga ninjas — and Footsoldiers — slimmer, but more agile and _ oh-so-much-more annoying _than their evolution.

He’s gasping for air as Deadpool guides them between the twined roots of a crowd of intertwined trees. Deadpool’s as calm as Peter’s ever seen him, standing watch for any of those ninjas, and Peter feels an irrational surge of annoyance at how collected and cool he looks.

He’s about to say something to cut the silence between them, but his alarms go off just as a fizzing sound makes Deadpool turn around. Peter makes it in time to envelop Wade’s bigger body into his bone legs before the bomb explodes and they’re sent off tumbling down the forest floor.

Five Footsoldiers and six Blademasters are moving silently towards them and they don’t even have time to exchange any semblance of a plan because Deadpool is on his feet, katanas ready and charging towards the nearest Blademaster.

The only thought Peter has as he dodges Windcleaver cuts and disarms Footsoldiers of their nasty sickles, is that he can’t go on like this forever. They’ve been hunted ever since they set foot outside that cave, and now he wishes they never had left it.

But they’d have been found sooner or later.

Then a wind cut takes half of his left, back bony leg and Peter loses his balance for a second before he rights himself. But that’s exactly what the two Footsoldiers and Blademasters need, because they focus and coordinate their attacks in such a way as to take out every single bony leg and send Peter tumbling down the wet forest floor, yards away from them.

He looks at the world beyond the mound on which he lies on his side, how a gentle mist rolls down between the twisted trees and how the light changes, dimming, making shapes out of the shadows in the trees.

Hadn’t it been a day like this when he died?

_ I can only do so much with what I have. _

Did the wind speak to him just now?

He tries to turn his head up, and his body follows, but the pain sears and locks his muscles into place, and even his pained groan is cut short for he can barely breathe through the pain. He’s never been more aware of his bone legs as he is right now. It’s like those ninjas didn’t just cut them off, but carved a deep wound into his spine that numbed his body, though not enough to _ not feel. _

_ It’s up to him if he wants to live. _

Yes, the wind definitely spoke to him. Or he’s going crazy. But why would he hear that familiar old woman’s voice? Is it because he’s close to dying? Does the loss of his legs mean that his life is forfeit, too? Is this the catch to that faery’s magic?

_ Do you want to live, child? _

Of course he does. There’s still so much to do. So many people to help and so many goblins to defeat. His aunt is waiting for him to come visit them soon. And Razor Face will make a mess out of his cottage if he doesn’t return soon. He knows that foul-mouthed goblin would seize the chance of taking over his home. He still has to meet Harry and MJ and congratulate them once again, see them happy and Gwen grumbling something sarcastic about how disgusting they are together.

_ DO YOU WANT TO LIVE, _ ** _CHILD?_ **

An answering voice rips out from the most hidden recesses of his soul with a roaring, ** _YES!_ **

And Peter cries out, fingers plunging with renewed strength into the yielding, wet earth, scraping deep welts into its forgiving bed as a pain so hot and overwhelming seizes his back that his mind melts into a blinding light for a long moment.

He’s gasping for air when the pain recedes to a dull thrum in the back of his skull, and he hoists his body up.

Something’s coming at him. That inner sense— that _ spider _sense alerts him of imminent danger and just as it’s about to hit Peter, two spider legs block the blow before he turns his head to look at the culprit.

But in front of his eyes are not his bone legs, but spider legs that are made of smooth metal, grey in the humid air. And sharp.

A trickle of blood flows down his finger before the cut heals.

He smiles behind his mask— and the smile feels bigger than he remembers his mouth could stretch. The stirrings in the pit of his stomach loosen, swell and then surge. It’s like smoke filling every nook and crevice of his body, slow and smooth and impossible to escape from.

Two Blademasters attack him and he jumps into the air on instinct, looking down at his opponents. A Footsoldier appears to his right and his grin stretches, feeling the oddest sense of merriment and playful mood assault him. The ninja dodges Peter’s metal leg, and Peter fails to dodge the knife that cuts into the side of his mask, biting into his cheek and ear.

He doesn’t feel the pain that he expects. Not even the sting.

It’s exhilarating!

_ Nothing better than puppets to exercise these new legs. _

The smoke fills him up completely.

He drops down like a boulder, dealing fast slashes to anyone in front of him or to his sides, while he feels the lightest he’s ever felt. He cackles, enjoying the feeling and the fight. He jumps every way, playing with the four ninjas like a cat plays with her food before he closes in on one and moving his front legs in opposing directions he cuts the ninja in two, horizontally.

The mad laughter that gushes out of his mouth is deranged at best, downright maniacal at worst. But this is the most fun he’s had in _ ages! _

**And we’re not gonna stop any time soon.**

The promise sits dark and heavy in Peter’s chest. The voice is both familiar and foreign, sounding like tar gurgling out with the words to stain Peter’s insides with more— 

“Madness.” He cackles, head leaning to one side as he considers the enemy in front of him.

Explosive knives dot the sky above Peter’s head and he blinks up at them, his cackles dying down to a wide grin as his left leg simply thrusts to the side, lightning-fast, into the nearest ninja chest. He pulls the dead body above his head and the knives plunge into it exploding as do the ones that stab the bed floor around Peter.

Scorched blood and bits of flesh and organs cover him and the area surrounding him.

His maniacal laughter is the only thing that rivals the deafening sound of the explosions.

The remaining ninjas attack him all at once and Peter throws the smoking carcass of the ninja to the side, jumping in the air to meet them there, his legs thrusting into thin air where three chests have been and missing the fourth one. 

He shoots a line and swings to the nearest tree, sitting on it with his legs and eyes following the popping in and out of the ninjas. So many flies trying to distract his attention from the one crawling down from above.

He cackles again because this is so funny to some twisted, uncontrollable side of his that surfaced in the wake of him almost dying. But just as he kills the one who tried to sneak-attack him, the wind cuts the tree in two, one slash above his head and the other below him and he falls on his back because he’s been busy dodging more attacks so that he didn’t have time to prepare himself for a forced landing.

The upper half of the tree almost squashes him if he didn’t awkwardly roll to the side at the last moment, the laughter bubbling up even as his legs cut through the branches that oppress him.

Out of the five Footsoldiers he counted initially, only three remain and five out of the six Blademasters. So many flies still to kill.

Through the haze of _ killkillkillkill _he registers that there is something else that he should pay attention to, but he can’t remember what as he hunts the elusive ninjas down and kills them one by one, indiscriminately and with a lot of zeal.

He gets down to two Blademasters standing, wounded and still not backing down.

Wonderful! He likes his prey feisty. The last struggle before he takes the life away from it.

He deals with them fast, even if he receives some cuts that scrape bone, but he heals faster still than before.

Then he turns and sees that there are still two Blademasters and three small fries, the latter of which converge on him. He makes fast work of them too, now that he knows how they move and what weapons they use, and since he gained momentum as he twirled and cut the last ninja’s throat, he throws himself at the Blademaster whose back is at him with so much glee and fizzy energy that he kills him in one strike.

“They’re so easy to kill,” Peter muses as he watches the red blood drip from his left front leg. Then his gaze focuses on the other Blademaster that’s sending another wind cut which Peter dodges easily.

He lunges in a semi-arc to deal with this one as fast as the other one.

“Spidey?”

The name jars him and the ninja uses the split second of unfocus to parry the leg and then disappears for good.

He turns, the glee tinging with red and black and swirling the smoke inside him into a whirlwind, growing and dangerous.

***

This is Spidey he’s looking at, right?

_ He has all the right limbs in the right place. _

**And he looks ready to kill us.**

Limbs. Oh. Those weren’t there last Wade saw of his guide. At least not glinting metal grey and so sharp they rival his katanas.

“Those are new,” he says, pointing with his chin towards the spider legs. “Had a makeover already? Would’ve liked to be there and offer pointers. Could’ve chosen red or pink or even blue. Hm, gold would work better with your complexion. And your mask— oops.”

He backtracks swiftly when the left front leg plunges into the earth milimeters away from his foot.

“That was close. What’s up Spidey?”

No answer.

_ Unless you count the heavy breathing and the raspiness. _

**Dunno. I find that manly and sexy.**

Wade snorts. “More like spider-ly.”

***cackles***

***

There’s something his madness tries to push away, and at the same time he tries to remember what that something is. It has to do with the prey in front of him.

_ Prey? _

Yes. Prey. It moves. It has sharp weapons in its hands. It is ready to kill — **us ** \- ** _US _ **— if he doesn’t kill it first.

But _ he _looks familiar.

It.

Prey.

No. This is— not— what. What? Why?

Prey.

**Prey.**

He lunges, but it’s not backed up by as much glee and murderous desire as the previous have been and his leg thrusts deep into the bark of the tree.

“Whoa, there, Spidey,” his prey babbles, dodging his attacks. “Whatever I did to piss you off, I’m sorry? Can we talk about this like civilized, grown up— man and spider? Come on, I know you have it in you. It’s easy. I sit down. You sit down. I make a fire. You catch some poor hare trying to escape. We roast the motherfucker up. Eat. Then you start confessing what’s keeping your spider pants in a twist. I listen and nod as if I understand. You continue as if I’m not there. I take notes. You sigh, maybe even cry. I offer you—” 

**More.**

No. 

But why not?

It. Prey. Kill.

**Kill. Kill. KILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILL!**

“No!” He feels his head jolting every now and again from side to side. “No,” he growls again, trying to resist moving forward and chasing the prey.

“No? What ‘no’? What’s happening, Spidey?

_ He. Not prey. HE. _

Who is he?

** _Prey. _ ** A lilting, amused voice in his head supplies. ** _You kill. Blood. Blood gurgling warm and liquid and so pretty._ **

Peter cries out, palms pressing against his ears to stop the voices that don’t even come from outside. The clamor drums a-rhythmically and he feels the yielding earth beneath his knees as he folds into himself.

Then there is a touch on his head, across the tip of his left fingers. He looks up, breathing erratically and the face he sees is so familiar. So familiar. _ But he can’t place it. _

Why is it so familiar? Where did he see it? Why? Why? WHY?

“Spidey? Spidey, you okay?” The hand strokes gently, and accompanied by the other one he pries his hands off his ears, keeping one captive in the bigger, calloused palm while the other cups his cheek through the mask.

Spidey?

Who is— 

_ “Did you leave, Spidey?” _

_ “Spidey?” he says, amusement filling his voice. _

_ “Spider-Man is too much of a mouthful.” _

Oh.

He blinks. The smoke recedes. “Deadpool?” he croaks.

Deadpool beams and then pulls him into a hug. “Spidey, you’re back!” he croons and Peter can feel the hard thunder of his heartbeat where his cheek is pressed against Deadpool’s chest.

But evil laughter interrupts their little reunion and Peter still feels dizzy and like he’s not— aligned? Like his mind and his body are a few millimeters off each other.

“Let’s go,” Deadpool says, all traces of cheer gone, his katanas sheathed already.

He pulls Peter to his feet and then proceeds to drag him off to some destination only Deadpool knows about. There’s no time to think about how he’s been in a similar situation before because his spider sense flares and he pulls Deadpool into him and then turns his back at the knife that explodes.

“Spidey,” Deadpool whispers, and he’s a hairbreath’s away from touching Peter’s mask. The proximity is unnerving. “I can’t die, remember?”

“Instinct,” Peter offers.

Deadpool grins like Peter just quipped the perfect comeback to an insult, and smacks a kiss in the middle of Peter’s masked forehead before he disentangles himself from Peter.

It takes him a bit to get out of the daze. But when he turns, two Blademasters already ganged up on Deadpool and one of his katana is missing. Peter crawls faster than his thoughts can form, shielding Deadpool against the wind cut. He realizes that the cut doesn’t do anything to his new legs. 

“Spidey.” There’s annoyance laced in there.

Peter lifts an unimpressed eyebrow, but it’s hard to see that with his mask in the way.

“We need to team up,” he says, even as Deadpool once again disentangles himself from Peter’s arms.

He’s starting to hate that. Hate Deadpool’s presumption that just because he can’t die Peter would be okay with him being hurt.

“I can deal with these two.”

Peter opens his mouth to argue, but the Blademasters are not waiting for them to clear things off and soon they’re separated, each dealing with one ninja.

Now that Peter’s not prey to the madness that seemed to have come or developed with his new legs, he doesn’t throw himself into the fight without that self-preservation to guide his attacks. But he still holds his own against the ninja, even as the smoke is trying to come back and take over.

He manages to deal a fatal wound to the ninja’s stomach and force him to disappear when he turns around and sees the moment Deadpool’s having his ass handed to him.

Peter lunges once again, but this time he shoots a line that opens into a web net and envelops the ninja. It’s too late. The wind cut paired with an explosive knife throw Wade off, making him lose his last katana, and Peter catches his wounded body in mid-air, before his metal legs plunge into the bark of a tree, high above ground.

He looks down at the prince in his arms, the groan Deadpool pushes through his teeth more defeated than painful.

“Let’s team up.”

“This is what happens when you don’t listen,” Peter quips.

“Are you gonna lecture me now?” Deadpool says, a bit dazed, but his wounds are closing in fast.

“Of course. I had the better plan.”

“I have immortality on my side.”

“What’s immortality without a side-ki— no, I didn’t say that—” He pushes them off the tree, shooting a line and swing from tree to tree.

“Awww, Spidey! You wanna be my side-kick? My loyal musketeer? Donkey to my Shrek?”

“No. Stop it. I made a mistake. Forget I ever said that.”

“No can do. Side-kick! That’s the best thing you said so far.”

“I disagree. I said many best things today. The bestest one being ‘we need to team up’.”

“Psh, side-kick tops that.”

“Does not.”

“Does too.”

“Are you a kid?”

“Royal prince kid, beg your pardon.”

“I can easily drop you, you know?”

Deadpool gasps theatrically and Peter’s glad for the mask because with his head turned to pay attention at their path among the trees, Deadpool can’t see the close-mouthed grin.

“You wouldn’t!”

“I so would.”

“That’s against the code of every side-kick.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“There will be once I get my hands on a piece of lamb skin and the blood of my enemies.”

Peter snorts before he can stop himself. “What are you, a Southerner?”

“With all the political marriages going—”

But Peter crashes them to the side as a red-paper knife sails in front of them. The explosion lands them hard on the rocky forest floor, just outside the treeline on a narrow outcropping.

They’re both fast to roll over and to their feet as ninja after ninja appear from behind the trees.

“We probably shouldn’t have talked while escaping ninjas,” Deadpool quips from a few steps to Peter’s left, crouched in a defensive position, his fingers twitching, most probably feeling the absence of his katanas.

“Now you’re telling me?” Peter throws, his front legs coming up in a defensive position of their own.

“I was enjoying myself teasing you.” He grins without taking his eyes off of the ninjas.

“Oh, no, no,” Peter says, a grin of his own worming its way up. _ “I _was teasing you.”

“I love it when we argue over who teased who,” Deadpool throws back playfully.

This time he and Deadpool attack first and at the same time. Prey, Peter now knows, is at its most dangerous when cornered. Deadpool punches and kicks like his life depends on it. That is, until he manages to get his hands on a Windcleaver and then the fight becomes less messy.

It’s not like Peter has the luxury to steal glances at the prince what with so many ninjas ganging up on him, but the few precious moments he does, he marvels at Deadpool’s perfect, honed stance and how light on his feet he is. It’s like watching a leaf dance along the wind instead of being a slave to it.

And then their backs slam into each other, Peter’s legs folding in to accommodate the prince.

“So team up?” Deadpool asks, his breathing all over the place.

Peter is not better. “If you can keep up.”

The prince cackles. “Cheeky. Let’s tag-team.”

“Deal. On three,” he says. “One—”

“WEE-WHOO!” Deadpool throws himself back into the fight, using his body weight to flatten two Footsoldiers in one go.

Peter shakes his head. “Figures.”

He throws himself, too, into the melee, but with much more tact and thought behind, as he alternates between using his metal legs to block and slash at swords, sickles and knives, and sending bursts of webs when ninjas try to sneak behind Deadpool’s back, dragging them off or into their companions.

Deadpool’s joyous cackle makes Peter grin and enjoy the fight so much more— even if there is the smoke, the madness deep down that wants to come out. Wants to grab hold onto Peter and whisper treacherous things in his ear. Make him— lose control. Forget who he is. Forget— what he does while he’s trying to remember—

His attention is pulled by an odd sound, part gasp, part grunt, as he sees two Blademasters sending a wind cut that meshes into a big X and Deadpool manages to block it with his new Windcleaver for a joyous second, before it splits and hits Deadpool’s head and legs and sends him tumbling down.

Peter’s running before he even forms the thought, the power of that combined cut making Peter think that he won’t make it in time to catch up with the prince.

But then he leaps and he shoots a line, dragging Deadpool to his chest as they somersault in the air and over the sudden edge of the plateau. One of his legs catches over the rough face of the cliff, digging a deep line as they fall, until they stop suddenly.

There’s only Peter’s ragged breathing in his ears and the warm, bloodied body cradled tightly against his chest. 

“Spidey?” Deadpool says, voice shaken, and Peter blinks his eyes open, taking in the forest blanket yards below them and then the healing cut crossing Deadpool’s handsome face.

He looks up and sees the deep gash on the rock face and how far down they are. It wouldn’t be impossible for them to climb back, but it would take a bit.

He focuses back on Deadpool’s blood-spattered face and wonders for a fleeting, innocuous moment why he looks like Peter grew another head. Then the wind makes his ear-long hair tickle his cheek and his stomach drops into the forest below.

He’s glad he doesn’t drop the prince, even though his arms and legs feel like they melted into jelly. Deadpool fishes his arm from beneath Peter’s and touches his jaw, square and less smooth than he remembers. Then the corner of his mouth, higher still on his cheek, almost to the cheekbone.

What did he become?

He wants to crawl somewhere and hide there until the prince goes away and forgets about what he just saw. He wants to disappear, really. But that’s an impossible task without dropping the prince.

And then bits of rock fall on his head and they both look up at the remaining ninjas.

Peter’s fast to react, twirling them so that Peter’s front and Deadpool are facing the bluff’s face.

“Be ready,” Peter tells him, close to his ear, aware more than ever how weird his mouth moves.

He feels the prince tense in his arms and nod once, and then Peter’s crawling so fast up the bluff’s face that they spring in the air before the ninjas have time to react.

“Drop me,” Deadpool orders, and Peter does without questioning.

The fight resumes, but this time they’re winning. Wade is unarmed, but he manages to get close enough to a Blademaster and take his Windcleaver. He wreaks havoc as more Footsoldiers pool from the treeline.

It threatens to become an odds against them kind of battle again, so Peter webs the treeline, putting a halt temporarily to the oncoming ninjas.

And then— then he remembers that he’s never seen the prince at the exact moment that he’s wounded. He certainly never saw him being impaled by a Windcleaver, two thirds of the blade protruding from his back as a sickening moan and a bloody cough are forced out of him.

Peter’s right there, moving faster than he can think and impaling the Blademaster with so much rage that he lifts the lifeless body of the ninja into the air, a monstrous growl breaking out of his too-wide mouth before he throws the corpse at the other ninjas. 

The smoke springs from its tightly coiled corner, filling his nooks and crannies with such vengeance that Peter’s self is pushed back, trampled into a corner of his own as the smoke takes control. But not for long. Peter snarls, both in his head and with his mouth, pushing back to grasp a bit of that control back.

He catches the prince with his own hands, pulling the blade out swiftly. Deadpool coughs blood and groans, face smushed into Peter’s collarbone. The growl doesn’t subside, even as he cradles Wade to his chest once more and sends them both flying over the edge as the outcropping explodes behind them.

***

Wade’s not really unconscious, just annoyingly dizzy from blood loss even if his wounds have closed already. But it’s difficult to keep his eyes open when he’s jostled so much and not feel like emptying the contents of his stomach: half a rabbit and a collection of berries he kept snacking on while hunting the rabbit. Yesterday.

Right. They haven’t eaten since yesterday. Spidey must be ravenous by now.

A wide jaw and three pairs of black eyes flash behind his eyelids.

Oh.

The ticking of sharp legs on wood filters through his mind as he puts things together to make sense of the past— however long it’s been since Spidey hurtled them both into the forest below.

On the bright side, they’re not in the Enchanted Woods anymore.

On the icky side, Spidey’s been drooling on him for enough time that his hair is flattened to his head.

“Hey, Spidey,” he murmurs, then clears his throat. “Hey! Prince to Spidey, you can put me down now.”

Spidey doesn’t answer and the jostling continues as they jump from tree to tree towards— wherever this Spidey is thinking of taking them.

**Thinking? Are we sure it’s the word we want to use?**

_ Yellow’s right. Have you looked at his face lately? _

“Duh! It was the first thing I saw when I thought that imminent death would be my faith.”

**Psh, imminent death! As if that’s possible.**

“You never know,” Wade murmurs.

**Think his webs are all in one bundle? If you catch my breeze.**

_ Drift. _

**That’s what I said.**

Wade snorts, but then peers up at the weird Spidey head with his lower square jaw, two fangs protruding white and slick with saliva— the same saliva that’s still dripping on Wade’s head.

_ Yuck. And here we were thinking of writing poetry about his beautiful, mysterious features. _

**He should’ve stayed mysterious.**

Wade huffs a quiet laugh, not so secretly enjoying being manhandled like this. But he still tries to dislodge himself from within Spidey’s arms, which results in them tightening around him.

**We’re not even trying.**

_ Psst, I think we like it. _

**Ooh! We like being kidnapped, hm? **

_ You know what they say: the longer one lives, the longer one’s kink list becomes. _

But then Spidey jumps down into a small meadow and places Wade on the soft floor. It’s covered in lichens and mushrooms, and when Wade turns there’s a huge tree at his back.

“Okay, anyone knows where we are?” Wade says cheerily, hands on his hips. “Spidey?” But his fellow arachnid is busy covering the treeline in webs and ignoring him.

He sighs and sits down. So he’s in an unknown forest with a guide that seems to have lost all sense of humanity or communication. How is he going to get out of this situation, hm?

_ Let’s hit him in the head. _

**White!**

_ What. Why are you so scandalized? You’re the first to suggest bloody solutions. Besides, it’s the fastest way to get the spider to not be a spider. _

“But what if we hit him too hard and he doesn’t wake up?”

_ Oh. _

**Yeah, ‘oh’. Think before you speak, White!**

_ Think? We’re two voices keeping company to a lonely guy. I’m not thinking. _ He’s _ the one thinking. _

**Look what you did! You hurt his feelings!**

_ I— I hurt his feelings? He hurt his own feelings! I have nothing to do with this. _

Wade ignores the bickering in his head because he has other matters to think about. More urgent and serious. Like what happened to his friend and how does he make it stop. It hasn’t been a long time since the fight, but he misses Spidey, the normal Spidey. Even with the mask. It’s true he wanted to see what kind of face hid behind the mask, but now— now he’s not sure he likes what he sees.

No. Not in that way. Not physically.

He doesn’t like what he sees because this is not the Spidey he came to know. There’s too much spidey in his Spidey, if you catch his drift. He might be stingy with his words, but he’s been trying to be Wade’s friend for the past three days. Even when they were attacked— _ especially _when they were attacked. He took more than one blow for Wade! What more does one want from a person before they consider them friends?

Wade certainly doesn’t need much. After all, when you’re cursed like Wade is, it’s hard to keep the friends you make without them becoming suspicious of what you try to keep hidden or jealous or hurt. He’s had enough of those during the past two decades.

Might be too early, but damn if he’s not tired of trying to make relationships last.

But Spidey— Spidey’s friendship is something that feels so natural. Like second skin or fitting clothes. They don’t even need to talk about it, but he knows it’s there. Or he thinks it is. Maybe he’s just desperate to connect with someone for once in his life. Maybe he’s seeing things that aren’t really there. After all, what reason can someone like Spidey have for saving Wade if something else isn’t at play here? For all he knows, Spidey’s been forced to do this or he was paid or somebody tipped him and he came here out of an altruistic desire to save someone in need.

Isn’t Spidey a hero?

To Wade he is. And not because he pulled Wade out of the monotony and stalemate that his life had been. But because— they’re friends.

Right?

Right. He’s starting to go in circles. Better scout the area and see what else there is to this forest.

He stands up, dusting his ass, but finding it damp from the mossy bed, and then heads for the little space between the treeline and the huge tree that blocks one side of the meadow. He’s curious to see how big this grand tree is.

But just as he approaches the space, Spidey jumps in front of him, blocking his exit.

_ “Mine,” _he growls and hisses at the same time, advancing on Wade.

“Ugh, what?” he tries, but instinct makes his legs move backwards, even though he wills them to stop because he’s _ not _afraid of Spidey. “Spidey, I know you’re not all there in the head, but I can’t just—”

_ “Mine!” _

He shoots a line, but Wade ducks on instinct. Spidey’s eyes seem to narrow even if Wade still has to see them blink. The atmosphere around them drops, and Wade’s muscles tense as they stare at each other. Then Spidey jumps, using his metal legs, and Wade drops into a roll to the side to escape, just so he can make a run for the nearest exit.

Only now, as he runs, does he realize that Spidey had been busy blocking almost every exit into the forest with cobwebs. Nothing comes in or goes out. Well, except for that space he had been going for earlier.

Spidey’s hot on his trails and Wade narrowly avoids being caught in the webs that keep flying left, right, and above his head.

“Spidey, let’s talk about this!” he squeaks as he stumbles over a moss-covered rock, and is fast to turn around just as Spidey drops on him, metal legs bracketing his body and wide mouth still dripping saliva, but on his chest now.

His hands go up reflexively when Spidey’s front metal legs thrust forward, stopping them.

_ “Mine.” _

“Is that the only word you know? Come on, Spidey. I know you’re in there— somewhere— deep beneath the nasty saliva and— unblinking eyes — and spider-y behavior. Don’t get me wrong, I like it when you’re possessive, but this is— a bit too much, don’t you think? Like a lot too much? Is that even allowed in English?” He shrugs. “Who knows, you take all the incorrect speech, Spidey.”

_ “Mine!” _

The legs push against Wade’s hands and Wade winces, feeling the sharpness biting into his palms and blood slowly gliding over the blades.

“How about we negotiate this?” Wade tries again, the cheer gone from his voice as he pushes futilely against the blades that are closing in on his face.

Then, his left hand slips, the blood making it hard to keep the grip on them and he makes it in time to turn his head half an inch as the blade thrusts into the soft earth.

“Phew! That was close!” He looks up at Spidey and what he sees is not the spider, but a glimmer of recognition in his eyes.

The other blade stops and then retracts.

Up until that point Spidey seemed to have forgotten that he had two legs and two arms, relying solely on his spider legs. But now, a hand touches Wade’s cheek, cold thumb tracing a line that makes Wade wince and realize that there’s a wound that hasn’t been there before. The blade— he didn’t even feel the cut.

Spidey jumps back as if he’s been burned and Wade watches in amazement as Spidey transforms back to himself, the legs retreating into his back and his face returning to his human features. But as the process goes on, so do Spidey’s cries and grunts and pained moans. It’s a harrowing thing to witness, but Wade’s not sure if he should—

Fuck it.

If Spidey finishes by thrusting a blade through Wade’s chest, then so be it.

He kneels by his guide’s supine body, knees gathered close to his chest, as he shivers violently.

“Hey, Spidey,” Wade murmurs, pushing a few locks of hair away from his eyes.

He’s shivering as if they’re stranded in the mountains, eyes going in and out of focus. A heavy sheen of sweat broke on his forehead, his cheeks gaining a darker color.

**That looks bad.**

_ Don’t want to alarm you guys, but I think he’s dying. _

Oh, no. No, not if Wade has any say in this.

He gathers Spidey’s shivering body into his arms and stands up.

_ Now what? _

**You don’t have a plan, do you?**

“Shut up! I’m trying to think!”

He looks around at the treeline covered in webs, and then at the great tree behind him. What should he do? Are there any healing pools around? He has no idea if this forest has any magic in it or if it’s just a simple forest. At least with the Enchanted Woods he knew the location of a handful of healing creeks and pools. But he can’t teleport great distances.

Useless.

He’s useless.

He looks down at Spidey, sweating through his clothes and shivering so much that it makes Wade want to shiver himself.

But a creaking noise pulls his attention away from the man in his arms. A— creature breaks the wall of webs. Or rather, her wooden, squeaking little cart full of bottles does, as — she? mutters to herself in a decisively angry tone of voice. She has flaming red hair, blue skin and she isn’t much taller than the cart she’s pushing. And then she sees Wade.

“Crivens! Wha’ are ye tan doin’ here?”

Wade blinks. “Tan?”

**I think she’s speaking Polynesian.**

“Right.” Wade clears his throat. “Bongiorno, fräulein, ¿donde está la biblioteca?”

“Wha’s tha’? Yer pullin’ my knickers?”

“What did she say?” Wade whispers to himself.

_ I think she’s asking if you’re hungry. _

“Ah. That, I most certainly am— fair lady?”

“C’mere, ye laddie,” she says, her raspy voice doing nothing to help Wade understand her, as she rounds the cart and lifts her bony, wrinkly blue arms in small fists. “I’ll show ye a head full o’ dandruff! C’mere!”

“Big Angie,” a reprimanding voice interrupts them, and Wade turns around with Spidey in his arms. “They are just travellers. My guests right now. Would you be so kind as to postpone your challenge until a later date?”

“Ach!” she says in disgust, her arms making an angry downwards motion, before taking her cart and crossing the meadow to the opposing side.

“Right,” Wade says again, staring into the black hole left in Spidey’s webs. “Where were we?”

“You were looking for help, if I remember well. Might I suggest climbing into my crown?”

Wade stills. “Who said that?”

**Wasn’t me.**

_ Me neither. _

Okay, did he develop another voice? Two is already more than he can handle. Three is a crowd and would most probably make him run up the hills. But it didn’t sound like the other two, inside his head. It sounded—

He turns around once again.

No one is there.

“If you’re looking for the source of my voice, you’ll find no humanoid shape.”

Wade looks left and right, but true to those words nobody is there.

Then he looks up at the great tree and frowns.

“Is— are you—”

“Yes, I am the Great Deku tree, master and protector of this forest.”

“So it is a magical forest!” Wade almost jumps up from excitement, but Spidey groans into his shoulder, and Wade’s arms tighten reflexively as he almost drops a kiss on his temple. He does shush him gently, though, lips barely skimming the damp forehead. “Do you know where I can find healing water? My friend here desperately needs that.”

“There is no healing water in this forest. At least none above ground.”

“Are you saying I need to dig a hole?”

“No, I am offering you an alternative,” the tree says, his voice calm and old. “Climb into my crown and there you will find red and blue berries. The red ones have been known to give the gift of continuity, longevity, like a story that hits a snag along the way before it finds its course again— different than it was supposed to be. The blue ones, however, end.”

“What do they end?”

“Whatever needs to end. Whatever it was not meant to have a beginning in the first place.”

He ponders the tree’s words, his gaze returning (again and again and again) on Spidey’s features, poring over them like he suffers from poor memory when in fact his is as impeccable as a freshly laid out piece of paper. 

“Make a paste out of them and give it to your friend,” the tree finishes, like an afterthought.

Wade takes one step, then stops. “What do you want in exchange?”

“I have many dry branches that drain my power. I would ask you to cut them all off and then burn them.”

Wade places Spidey down on the moss floor, drinking in his fevered features. He wonders if Spidey will ever let him see the play of various expressions on his face when this stint is done, from anger to sadness to happiness— pleasure. He glances up.

“I don’t have anything sharp on me. I lost—”

Two palm-tall faeries come flying into the meadow each carrying a katana. _ Wade’s _lost katana.

“How did you—”

“My power extends far beyond the confines of this forest.”

He swings them in the air, reacquainting himself with the steel, before he sheathes them in the leather holster on his back. The faeries don’t go back, instead they seem to take a keen interest in Spidey. 

“Hey, don’t—” He makes a grab for one that eludes his grasp, twirling around his hand as flawlessly as a breeze would.

“Fear not,” the tree says. “They won’t harm your friend. They will use their dust to alleviate the pain.”

“Pain?” Wade’s startled by the revelation.

“Yes, your friend’s body is fighting against the new development in his powers. Right now he is out of balance, for which the fever broke.”

Wade nods, feeling determination washing his worries clean. First, he needs to get those berries and make a paste out of them, then he’s going to do some cleaning work because a tree asked him to.

**Hey, there are worse ways to repay a debt.**

_ Like trying to seduce an ogre away from his coveted treasure. _

“And I succeeded,” he says as he climbs the welted trunk. He looks over his shoulder at the faeries as they fly in loops and twirls above Spidey’s body, sprinkling their magical dust and keeping the shivers at bay temporarily. 

_ He almost broke you in half. _

**Kinkiest night we ever had!**

_ Hope we never repeat that. _

“Why not?” Wade comments, a smirk on his lips as he grabs the lowest branch and pushes himself up on the top of the trunk. “‘Twas the first time I felt it for hours even after I healed.”

_ My frying edges won’t survive a bis. _

***cackles***

Wade snorts as he looks around for the berries. He finds them on the other side of the uneven top of the trunk, but as he collects them, an issue rises.

“Hey, talking tree, how am I supposed to make a paste if I don’t have anything to grind them with?”

“Use my dry branches. They are twisted in many ways.”

Not wrong. Above him, among the healthy branches, there are those of a brittle and dry look, painting the dome in streaks of vibrant green and dead brown. It doesn’t take Wade a long time to find a branch that’s as thick as his thigh with a wide hole in the middle. Finding a stick is like hitting a beehive just to see one bee.

He jumps out of the tree, rolling into a crouch and getting to work without delay. The paste smells sweet and sour at the same time and he almost tastes it, but he resists. With two fingers, he scoops some, and with the other hand he opens Spidey’s mouth. It’s a bit difficult to make an unconscious person swallow, and Wade feels guilty and dirty at the same time for doing this without Spidey being aware of it. But if it means that Spidey’s going to get better, then Wade grits his teeth and goes through with it.

By the end, Spidey’s lips are colored a bruising blue and no matter how much Wade cleans them, the color won’t go away. 

Wonder how they taste, the thought flits through his mind like the flutter of a butterfly’s wings. 

His index and middle finger freeze on Spidey’s lips, the former dipping softly in the gap between them. By then, Spidey’s breathing had calmed down and the fever subsided. Only his cheeks are still flushed, but the color isn’t as bad as before.

One of the faeries flies under his nose and he sneezes, the dust tickling his nose.

Right. He isn’t done.

He climbs the welts on the trunk without a backwards glance and starts the slow work of cleaning the tree of its dead branches.


	4. Chapter 4

***

The smell of smoke brings him back to the waking world. A cover of stars tints his vision as well as faint, flickering blue light at the base of it. Peter turns his head to the side to see palm-tall dragonflies— no, they’re— 

He scrambles back until his back hits something. Those aren’t dragonflies, he realizes as one flies right up in his face, stares at him with a curious look on— her face and then flies off.

But they’re not ashen skinned and wrinkly, so Peter releases the breath he’s been holding.

“Welcome back, Spidey,” a familiar voice comes from behind him and he turns around, putting some distance between them.

“Dead— pool?”

The clothes are the same, burgundy shirt, tattered in places and dirty, and black pants. He sneezes, the wind pushing the smoke in his face. What he sees after the wind changes again is not the prince he remembers.

“You’re—”

Deadpool’s face changes, as if he just now realizes what Peter’s seeing.

“Oh, this?” He points to his scarred face, as if it’s something normal and he does this every day, but there’s an odd quality to his voice, small and almost vulnerable. On edge. “Thought since I already saw your face it’s only fair…” He trails off, looking into the mid-distance, away from Peter’s blatant stare.

The faint light from the dying fire a few steps from them doesn’t quite give Peter all the details, but he sees enough of Deadpool’s face to notice the absence of any kind of hair, the dark valleys and ridges, the pale moonlight catching on the occasional smooth skin in-between one scar and the other.

Peter cannot stop staring.

And he knows it’s something that’d make  _ him  _ uncomfortable. The prince doesn’t look back at him.

Then it clicks.

His hands fly to his own face, touching smooth skin and a smather of stubbles. Despite his abilities, he always seems to take a lot of time to grow facial hair.

He sneezes again. “What  _ was  _ in that fire?”

“Dead branches from that tree.” He points straight ahead at the largest tree Peter ever saw. “It’s the Great Deku Tree. He helped me get you back.”

“What?” Peter blinks and tries to recall, but apart from hazy, distorted images and sounds he can’t put any piece together. “What happened?”

Now Deadpool glances at him. “What do you remember?”

“I—  _ we  _ were fighting? Those… ninjas. And you— you were.” Something cold and nasty slithers down his spine and he fixes a glare on the prince. “You jumped straight into the fight without a weapon! What’s wrong with you? You even died! I saw you!”

Deadpool flashes a grin. “Told ya I can’t die.” He shrugs one shoulder. “‘S okay. We got out. Actually, you got us out. Flung us straight into the forest without a second thought.”

Peter anger surges so fast and hot that he sees blinking spots in his vision. “You  _ died!” _ He breathes heavily. “You fucking  _ died in front of me!  _ I don’t care that you can come back. You  _ died.”  _ His voice breaks in the end, even if he stubbornly refused to let it.

But emotions are running wild and rampant and he has no control over them. He stares at the treeline, ignoring the prince to collect himself. He has no idea where all that pent-up rage comes from.

Then a warm hand envelops his shoulder and on instinct his head turns around lightning fast just to see how close the prince is to him.

“I’m sorry,” Deadpool intones, looking as if it’s hard to maintain eye contact but he wants to do this right. Peter’s vision is a bit blurry. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I scared you.”

“I don’t think I told you this because I thought it was obvious, but I’m in charge of protecting you,” he says ardently. “It is my duty.”

And the moment he sees the prince’s eyes widen minutely, Peter realizes what a stupid choice of words that was. Deadpool takes off his hand— or he tries to, because Peter’s own covers his in a split second, keeping it there. It’s only now that he becomes aware of how much he craves touch, how much he’s been waiting to be touched simply because the other wants to and not because they’re in the middle of the battle and they need support or help.

He craves the simple touches, the caresses, the weight of a palm on his skin.

They freeze like that, Peter’s hand on Deadpool’s atop Peter’s shoulder, both unable to tear their eyes off each other.

He knows this shouldn’t happen, that what they’re doing right now is  _ wrong  _ and will only end up in tragedy. Peter’s here to bring the prince back, to bring him to the one who will break the curse.

But he can’t, for the life of him, stop the yearning, the craving, the just-a-little-bit-more.

“I’m sorry,” Peter says before the prince decides he wants his hand back— because Peter would let him. If he wants to. Put distance between them, that is. He watches intently as Deadpool’s features change, still guarded, still waiting. “I didn’t mean it like that. What I meant is that I— can’t help but want to protect you.”

“I can’t die,” the prince repeats, hoarse like his vocal chords forgot how to form sounds.

“Yes, you keep saying that,” Peter says, a soft, exasperated sigh escaping him. “But knowing and seeing it are two vastly different things. I— I change— something happens to me when I see you hurt. I— don’t know how to explain it. It’s like there’s this black maw closing around me and you’re the only focus. And it’s so strong that it’s almost like I can feel your pain…”

He becomes aware of how impossibly close the prince is. So close, in fact, that Peter can’t read the expression on his face. He turns his head at the last moment, Deadpool’s lips caressing his cheek, leaving behind a hot, hyper-sensitive smudge where they touched Peter’s skin.

“We can’t,” Peter says quietly.

He squeezes Deadpool’s hand, though, feeling that his words might be taken the wrong way, and presses his cheek against Deadpool’s, closing his eyes to take in the uneven, warm skin. 

“I’m not the one you’ll marry in a few days,” he adds, a whisper against the prince’s cheek.

A curse is issued from behind Deadpool’s lips, even as his free hand comes to lie heavily on Peter’s hip. 

“Can we—” Deadpool swallows, his head slowly gliding down to press his forehead into Peter’s shoulder. “Can we lie down like this for a while?” 

If Peter had any kind of armor on him, this would be its undoing. With that, Peter reaches the limit to how much he can endure refusing  _ this.  _

“Yes, please,” he whispers, already trembling in anticipation.

Deadpool guides them both to lie down on the mossy ground, his bigger body almost enveloping Peter completely. He’s not sure he likes this position as his protective instinct rears its stubborn head, but the prince’s arm across his midriff tightens, just like the bend one under Peter’s head. In warning or because he feels the need to bring Peter that little bit closer to him, he’s not sure.

“Wade.”

“Hm?” he murmurs, eyes closed because he finally managed to calm his instincts down and enjoy this.

“My name.”

Peter opens his eyes and half turns his head to look at Wade, the name rolling over in his mind.

“Wade,” he tries it on his lips and Wade smiles, a soft, little thing that Peter can’t help but mirror. 

“Thought you should know my name now that we both have our secrets pretty much laid out in the open.”

Peter turns back, taking in the hard and soft body at his back and how completely it covers his back. He shouldn’t get used to it.

Too late.

Because Peter Parker is a pro at making bad decisions. But this— this is royally bad.

Yet he’s unable to push himself out of that embrace, away from what Wade’s offering right now. They’ve fought almost non-stop for two days now. Even if Peter’s feeling okay, he can’t deny that emotionally he’s in a bit of a mess. And in dire need of comfort. Which the prince seems all too ready to offer.

“Mine’s Peter,” he says at last.

“Peter.” Rumbled right into Peter’s nape, felt straight through his back and into his lungs, Wade’s lips shaping his name directly on his skin. He shivers.

There’s a growing tension between them that Peter doesn’t want to acknowledge, but Wade probably feels it in Peter’s thundering heartbeat and the tenseness of his body.

“Relax,” Wade murmurs into his nape. “I won’t do anything.”

Peter narrows his eyes. “I’m not afraid  _ you  _ might do something.”

Wade’s breath hitches and he stills, a long, hot brick wall at his back. Peter smirks and relaxes now.

“You stink,” he says after a while, realizing that it was bothering him, and the wall at his back melts into something more malleable. 

“That’s a combination of your drool and my blood.” He can feel the shape of his smile pressed against his skin. “I felt dotted on. Pro’lly more than it’s normal. If dotting means on the edge of eating me. But worry not, Spi— Peter, I’m still very much in one piece. And even if you took a chunk of me, I don’t think I’d’ve taste good, and it’d grow back.”

A body in his arms flashes in his mind, then lots of webs and something sharp, glinting.

“Ugh,” he covers his face, “I did drool on you, didn’t I?”

Wade only hums, his lips still very much attached to his nape. Peter doesn’t mind one bit. This is the best he’s felt sharing physical space with someone in a long time.

“Wait!” He suddenly turns in his arms, even if Wade tightens his hold. “I wanted to— eat you?” 

Wade watches him carefully. “Well… not really. Shut up, it wasn’t like that,” he murmurs more to himself. “No, he didn’t almost— go away, Yellow.”

Peter frames his face between his palms. “What did I do, Wade?” He’s prepared for the worst. 

Wade side-glances away from him. “Nothing much. You were— reeeeally protective. Didn’t let me get far from you. Kept me here. Safe.”

Peter frowns. “That’s not what I meant. What did I do?”

Wade purses his lips and for a moment Peter is sure that he’s goin to clam up and not say anything. 

“I fought you. Got a bit messy. I almost hurt you.”

He narrows his eyes. “That’s not what happened, is it? What. Did. I. Do.”

“One of your Spidey legs got me.” Peter’s hands slacken. “But it wasn’t serious. A small wound,” Wade hurries to reassure.

“I hurt you,” he says quietly, letting those words sink in.

Wade catches one wrist, keeping Peter from distancing himself.

“You didn’t. I mean, yes, you did. A bit. But you didn’t do it on purpose. And you came back when you realized.”

Peter doesn’t know if it hurts more that he actually hurt Wade or the fact that Wade’s trying to assure him that it wasn’t his fault. Wade lets him put a bit of distance between them, but his arms are still pretty much around him.

“Still, I—”

A slow creaking noise interrupts him and he frowns. They both sit up.

“I think I know who it is,” Wade says, a bit of apprehension in his voice.

Peter frowns at him, and then at the black hole in his webs that he hadn’t seen before now. 

“Be prepared,” Wade continues, his body tensing near Peter.

He gives Wade a funny look. What kind of enemy are they up against? Did the Yiga clan members catch up with them? But they never made this much infernal noise. It’s like being slowly dunked into freezing water and feeling as it rises on your skin, unhindered.

“Wha’ are ye tan still doin’ here?”

Peter blinks. Then he looks at Wade.

“I told you to be prepared,” Wade says, lifting his hands in defense. “Don’t look at me like that. I don’t understand her. Last time I thought she was asking me if I was hungry, when she challenged me to a fight.”

But Peter’s not even able to formulate a thought in his mind before he sees the odd blue-skinned old woman pick up the broom from atop her wooden cart and march pointedly in their direction.

Wade waves. “Hi, hello, there Cranky Blue Old Lady. Live long and prosper!” And his fingers do a weird little thing where he separates his index and middle finger from the last two.

“Don’t dawdle! Come on, off ye go!” She actually uses her broom to shoo them off.

“I think we’re supposed to leave now,” Wade murmurs with half of his mouth.

“You think?”

“Off ye go!” she repeats with more fervor, her broom sweeping over his feet.

Wade is the first to get in action, sheathing his katanas and then picking up Peter’s pouch before he grabs his wrist and takes them quickly out of the meadow.

“Wait,” he tries to make Wade stop, “Wait. Wade. Do you even know where we’re going?”

“Sure do. There’s a road not far from here. Once we reach it, we take it up north and we should be in your lord’s domain by tomorrow at sundown.”

***

They walk for hours, following the serpentine, dusty road, flanked by trees on both sides. Wade thinks that they might never get out of the forest, but thankfully nobody attacks them or shoos them with their brooms, so he relaxes besides Peter.

He finds out that Peter likes to tinker with stuff and even invent, even though he downplays his brilliance a lot. And Wade knows that he’s brilliant because— 

**Have you met the guy? Look at him! He oozes perfection. I’m shocked his footsteps don’t leave behind light or gold or something scintillating.**

_ *snorts* You’re in over your ass, Yellow. _

**And proud to be! We don’t fall for such perfection every day.**

_ Shh, shh! Keep that up and he’s gonna start mumbling to himself again. Better keep a semblance of normal as much as we can. _

**Good thinking, White! And when he’s in over his tits— **

His boxes continue making plans about how it’s gonna be too late for Peter to back off and what Wade should do to make him fall hard and fast. But Wade tunes them out, because he knows nothing will come out of this. Peter might not be as repulsed by his hideous self as Wade thought he would be, but give it time and better light and Wade’s sure Peter’s gonna change his mind faster than a mother changes her baby’s dirty panties.

“You’ve told me a lot about your aunt and uncle. What about your parents?”

Peter pushes his face up into the cool predawn air. “I don’t know where they are. The last I heard they managed to cross borders into Farther Away Kingdom. I hear the people there are more advanced than us.”

“I’ve heard reports that they use magic to get ahead of the rest of us.”

Peter peers at him. “Or maybe my mother is helping them using only her inventress brains and my dad’s charm.”

Wade grins and nods. “Or that. So you take your knack for devices from your mom.”

“And the looks from my dad. Or so my aunt keeps telling me.”

“Really? Would’ve bet it was the charm.”

Peter smiles knowingly and Wade mirrors it with a more amused one of his own. “I’m not sure a pirate’s charm is something you’d write home about.”

“It won your mom’s heart, didn’t it?”  _ And you’ve won mine.  _ But he clamps his mouth shut over those words.

Peter hums and Wade is glad that he’s watching the scenery around them because Wade is not sure he’s able to stop staring at him. It’d be uncomfortable if you looked to the side and saw this hideous, scarred man staring at you with unabashed admiration.

**And no less than six floating hearts.**

_ I counted ten. _

**Oh, look, they’re multiplying like rabbits.**

Just as the sun peeks from behind the dark silhouette of the mountains and Wade’s transformation begins, they come upon a small waterfall not quite hidden behind the treeline on Wade’s side.

Peter meets Wade’s gaze and a smile crests his lips, just as Wade begins to feel more confident in himself and more reckless with his words and behavior and stares.

“Let’s make a stop at the waterfall,” Wade suggests, already diverging from the path and into the knee-high grass.

“Are you sure you want to go there?”

“Why?” Wade calls over his shoulder, feeling buoyant and restless. “Afraid another crancky woman will shoo us?”

Peter’s fulsome chuckles puts a lilt in his heart and a sprint in his step.

_ Ugh. We’re so gonna regret letting this play out. _

**But hey. We’re having fun in the meantime, don’t we?**

_ You know it’s not about fun anymore.  _

**…. Right. We’re inside an idiot’s head who doesn’t know how ** ** _not _ ** **to fall hard.**

“Hey, I can hear you loud and clear, y’know,” Wade mutters just as his feet step on the wet stones making up part of the shore.

“You know,” Peter chirps right behind him, “that the water’s gonna be freezing this time of day, right?”

Wade shrugs. Really, he doesn’t care as long as he gets the stink out of his hair and skin. 

“Who knows when we’ll get the chance to bathe. And I’m not gonna go all the way to your lord’s stinking like high heavens.”

He moves near the waterfall, stepping carefully across the stones. Before he gets too close, he shucks off his shirt.

“Here, catch.” He throws it at Peter who catches it with one hand before it hits his face. Wade grins at the raised eyebrow. “Keep it dry until I finish here.”

Not waiting for Peter to answer he turns around and takes a deep breath before he ducks his upper body beneath it.

_ “Fuck! ‘S colder than Death’s bones!”  _

**Goodbye, Wade! We’re leaving behind your frozen carcass for warmer bodies.**

He snorts, making fast work of rinsing his head, his neck, armpits and torso, before stepping away from it. Peter’s there, waiting for him as he shivers like a wet cat.

“How are you gonna dry yourself before you catch a cold?” 

He flashes a chattering grin. “I us-se m-m-my sh-sh-shirt.”

With another dubious look from Peter, Wade takes his shirt and uses one side of it to dry his hair and most of his upper body, before he ties the sleeves around his neck and lets the wet part dry, face up on his back.

“So you’re gonna walk shirtless from now on.”

“I will,” he says, then he registers how odd Peter’s voice sounded and his grin grows. “Unless you have objections.”

Peter turns and marches back towards the road. “None from me.”

And remember that Wade feels bolder now that he has hair and smooth skin? Well, he sprints to catch up with Peter and just as boldly grabs his hand, twining their fingers. Peter sucks in a sudden breath, probably in part because Wade’s hands are so cold. But his eyes fly up to Wade’s face most certainly taking in his hair sticking in odd directions, before Wade sees his gaze slowly trailing down over his neck, collarbone, chest, and stop somewhere around the beginning of his pants.

He’s not trying to preen by pushing up his chest or— 

_ He totally is. _

**Shh, White. Let him show his pedigree.**

_ You’re right. So we can watch this crash and burn later. _

They walk hand in hand until the path starts to be peopled and Wade puts on his shirt now that it’s dry. Wagons full of hay or barrels or vegetables pass to and fro as well as pedlars old and young, mothers with unruly children and the occasional horse rider. Nobody gives them more than a passing glance, sometimes not even that. They’re just two travelers passing by, nothing more, nothing less.

Wade likes the anonymity. Not that he expected people to recognize him on the spot. He’s been away from the public’s eye since he was a kid. He doubts his own parents would recognize him if he shows up. Yes, it’s still a big ‘if’. He actually considers ditching this lord and go live with Peter.

Peter shoulder checks him as if in response.

“What?” Wade looks down at him.

“You’re too quiet,” he says, a sing-song quality to his voice. “What are you mulling over?”

He waggles his eyebrows. “Was thinking about that pert ass of yours. My hands are itching to—” 

Peter snorts, but his cheeks are less pale. “Yeah, sure. Try another one.”

“No, really. It’s true! You’re pert ass coupled with your handsomeness makes me want to elope.” He doesn’t notice the shadow falling over Peter’s features. “As in whisk you away somewhere without many people, where nobody knows who I am. Not that anybody here seems to recognize me. So—”

Peter grabs his wrist and pulls him into his side as a large wagon full of hay passes by. There’s a patch of uncovered plank right in the middle of the hay.

They both look at each other at once.

“What do you say?” Peter asks with a mischievous smirk.

Wade stops and bends at his middle in an exaggerated bow as he motions with his hand towards the cart. “Lead the way, m’lord!”

The wagon isn’t going fast so they sneak up behind and hop on without jostling it and alerting the rider. Wade dangles his feet as Peter covers both their mouths to stop the giggling from being heard, and Wade basks in Peter’s touch, the warmth coming from his side plastered to Wade’s.

He’d keep reliving these moments over and over if he wasn’t so busy keeping more than one body part in touch with Peter’s. As soon as they calm down, he snatches Peter’s hand and out of an impulse stronger than Wade’s control, he brings it up so that he can kiss his knuckles. 

Another sharp intake of breath. Wade’s becoming kind of addicted to them already. Addicted to the feeling of surprising Peter, of doing things that make Peter’s whole body and brain stand to attention, his eyes only on Wade’s. Yes, he craves that and more.

He sighs, opening his eyes when he didn’t even realize that he closed them, and looks at Peter who doesn’t say anything. Or maybe he can’t. Maybe he feels as tongue-tied as Wade does — as impossible as it sounds — whenever he’s close to Wade. Because he always feels like there are a million things that he wants to tell Peter, but at the same time he feels as if he could sit at his side and speak of nothing for hours on end and he’d still feel overcome with happiness.

***

“Hey, sir,” a kid blocks their path as soon as they dust off the hay from their clothes. He’s chubby and, Peter notes as the kid stops a few steps away, not quite reaching Peter’s hip. “I’ll give you some coin if you show me your swords.”

Wade looks at Peter, both unsure if the kid is joking or not, but Wade shrugs and unsheathes his katanas, kneeling on one knee and presenting his weapons. He keeps the sharp edge pointed towards himself, a detail that Peter doesn’t know what to do with or why it makes his chest flutter. The kid approaches without fear, his face nodding every once in a while as he looks this way and that way, admiring the weapons as if he’s a master in them and is taking in the majesty and beauty.

“Do you know your swords?” Wade asks, and Peter hears the curiosity in his voice. He’s not asking just to humor the kid.

Peter watches as a grin stretches the kid’s lips, making dimples appear on his dirty cheeks.

“‘Course I do! My dad’s a blacksmith. He shows me all kinds of swords and what they’re used for.” He nods in satisfaction and Wade sheathes his katanas, but doesn’t stand up. “Those are katanas you have. Forged from a steel that none of the three kingdoms have. Dad worked with it only once.”

“Who knows. Maybe these are the sword he worked on.”

“Possibly. Here, a token for your trouble, sir.”

The kid fishes through his pouch and comes out with five coins which he gives Wade before tearing it off down the path toward a destination only he knows.

“Well, hard to come by people who keep their word,” Peter says conversationally as he watches the back of the kid disappear around the corner of a house.

“Hard, but not impossible,” Wade acquiesces and when Peter looks up, he’s close— too close, an amused little smile playing at the corner of his lips as his fingers hook into Peter’s pouch, pulling Peter closer and dropping the coins inside.

He narrows down his eyes at the prince, knowing that he’s doing this on purpose. Their fronts touch each time they breathe in, and if there wasn’t the gentle breeze Peter’s sure he’d be able to feel Wade’s warm puffs against his chin.

“Make way, ya peasants!” someone shouts from up the road.

Peter’s fast reflexes grab Wade’s shirt, pulling him off the road as they watch a maniac spurn two brown horses on, the barrels in his wagon slamming against each other.

Wade’s chuckles warm a very specific spot inside his chest, and he barely looks up before he feels lips pressing against his forehead. It freezes him to the spot, but also makes his eyes flutter, absorbing the cosy feeling. Such a deliberate, innocent show of affection that Peter has to stop breathing and wait for the tight coil at the base of his throat to melt away.

“Let’s find an inn for the night,” Wade suggests. “We have enough coin for that and a warm meal.”

His words aren’t out of his mouth before Peter’s stomach answers the call of food. He sighs, feeling as if he lost a fight he didn’t even know he was fighting and trails after Wade through the village in search of the inn.

It turns out that they didn’t even have to walk far, the establishment rising in brown and dirty yellow, nestled between two tall houses — as tall as the inn. The sign announces it to be the ‘Happy Frog’. There are a handful of people inside, each minding their own business, and Peter’s hand goes to his stomach in an attempt to settle the impatient growl as the smell of roast and vegetables mingle in the room. 

They board a room and order the inn’s daily specialty which is stew with carrots and freshly baked bread before Wade charms the middle aged woman into giving him the key to the room. The only reason he offers is that he doesn’t want drunks to stumble into it and pass out. 

But Peter hears the ‘don’t disturb us’ loud and clear. Whether it’s because the sun’s almost set or for other reasons, Peter can’t be sure.

He’s amused at the whole scene, though. Amused because this is a side to Wade that he couldn’t have seen unless they’d be around people. He wonders if he’ll behave like that once he reaches the castle. His mood sours, but Wade’s flashing him a grin and he’s blessedly distracted for now.

“What?” Wade asks, one step ahead of Peter.

He should have taken precedence, and Wade fought him on that because logically the one with the food should go first. But then Peter muttered a ‘I want to see the view from behind’ and Wade’s mouth clamped shut and headed towards the wooden stairs without another word. 

Peter isn’t sure what came over him, or why he’s playing this game that will only leave him hollow when it ends. It’s like he stupidly lets Wade fill up that gap inside his chest that he got used to being empty because he wants to see for how long he can torture himself.

“Nothing,” he says, and he doesn’t even try to hide the little smile.

“Not taking that for an answer.” 

“You have a nice behind,” Peter blurts out only to hear Wade’s fulsome laughter, and then see the little wiggle his hips do which pulls soft giggles from him.

They reach their room and Wade opens the door, standing to the side to let Peter enter before him and beaming at him in amusement the whole time. 

He places the tray on the desk pushed beneath the small windows before he starts lighting the candles one by one. There’s still light outside, the sun’s warm rays painting his shadow on the opposite wall, but it’s not enough to comfortably sit in and eat. In the meantime, Wade closes the door, locking it, and then checks the bed and the closet, the only other furniture in the room besides the desk and the hip high chest on which a bar of soap, a folded off-white towel and a large bowl filled with fresh water sit atop a cream cloth.

“How’s the bed?” Peter asks.

“Smells fresh and clean,” Wade says, after he pushed the covers to reveal nearly immaculate white sheets. Unfortunately, the bed is a single one so they’ll have to squeeze in to sleep. Butterflies tickle Peter’s stomach and he’s not sure if they’re the result of this knowledge or it’s simply hunger. “No questionable stains,” he continues, placing back the pillow, “or other such stuff.”

“Well, this is a rather wealthy inn for these parts.”

“It’s because it’s the only road that avoids the Enchanted Woods and connects North to South, so there’s an increased traffic of travelers.”

Peter nods just as Wade’s curse takes hold and he loses his smooth skin and dirty blond hair in a matter of seconds, the scars eating at him with vengeance. 

This is the first time he sees it in action and he can’t quite tear his eyes away from the prince even as Wade turns his head towards the closet, as if he can’t look Peter in the eyes while this— this uncontrollable mutilation happens to him. Peter steps up, wanting to reassure him, but Wade moves towards him before he can do that.

This time Wade is the one who sighs, hands lying on the back of his seat, still not meeting Peter’s eyes. “It was bound to happen,” he says in resignation. 

“At least we’re in a closed space,” Peter croaks, unable to tear his eyes off the prince, the warm glow of the three candles on the table making the scars on his face shift with each movement.

He wants to reach out and touch him, offer comfort,  _ do something  _ to lift the heavy blanket of dark mood that settled around his shoulders, but he has come to realize that Wade isn’t the most open to suggestions while in this form. And Peter feels compelled to try to convince Wade that he can be himself even when he looks like that. It’s not like Peter is the epitome of beauty when he transforms. But his tongue is heavy and tied in his mouth, so his words stumble to a halt and fall back in his throat.

He hates himself when he does this — when emotions are running so high that he’s unable to voice them.

Peter takes a seat and only after does Wade join him. 

They eat, and even if Peter’s stomach is a happy bunny right now because the stew is delicious and not very hot, he can’t help but steal glances at his silent companion. He’s hunched over his bowl, arm coiled around it as if Peter might think to steal his food, trying to make himself as small as possible. 

Peter’s heart aches and he almost chokes on the next mouthful, berating himself for not being able to reassure Wade that Peter is so far from being repulsed or disgusted by his scarred face that he’d happily jump in his arms and worship his body from head to toe and toe to head. 

Twice. 

With enthusiasm.

But it’s like someone snuffed out a light and Wade’s left to huddle into a corner waiting for the night to pass. Suddenly, Peter loses his appetite and because he can’t word properly right now, he uses another tactic.

Slowly, he pushes his feet up into Wade’s lap, shoeless. It’s like Peter pushed a lever because Wade looks up instantly as if Peter just burned him. He can’t help but notice that the arm that’s been protecting his bowl goes under the table to lay a hot hand over Peter’s cold ankle.

He sighs in delight at the feeling, almost closing his eyes as the knot of nerves inside him melts away. 

“There you are,” he says low and intimate, eyelids at half mast as he peers at Wade. “You finally looked at me.”

Almost as if on instinct, Wade ducks his head. Peter has none of that. He dares grasp Wade’s chin between his thumb and index finger, taking a moment to feel the raised flesh, and then gently turn his face towards him.

“Whatever you think I think about you right now, don’t. It’s not true.”

A light flickers into his dark blue eyes. That or they catch the warm glow of the candles.

“Really? Because I just thought that you thought I was incredibly handsome.”

“You are,” Peter says readily. “Unconventionally, irredeemably, inappropriately handsome.”

Wade tenses, and why does Peter end up saying the wrong thing again? But it’s true, what he said. He really feels that way. So why can something so true be perceived as wrong?

Wade stands up abruptly, relinquishing his hold on Peter’s ankle and walks to the bed, turning his back on him. Peter mourns the loss of touch and warmth for a few moments before he stands up, too, discarding his other shoe under the table.

“Wade, I mean it,” he says. Maybe repetition will make it sound true and real.

“No, I hear you.” His voice sounds odd, like he’s keeping himself from shaking, like he’s trying to keep emotions at bay.

Peter approaches him slowly. “It’s just that you still can’t accept this part of yourself,” he voices what Wade’s not saying.

He goes for Wade’s hand, but Wade talks and he pauses. “For what feels like my entire life it’s just been me and Rosie with the occasional human or creature passing by. I’ve never— it’s been—” He sighs, frustrated and like he’s two seconds away from bursting out of his skin. 

Peter snuggles his hand into Wade’s and Wade turns, his eyes no quite reaching Peter’s. He looks as if Peter plucked this leaf from this one tree and traveled with it far and wide and then let it go on a summer breeze without pointing it into a direction.

“It’s the first time I spend so much time with one person.” His whole body feels as if it wants to be as far away from Peter as possible, but his hand clenches around Peter’s. “It’s nice and easy during the day. I know how to— act. But at night, I’m— I’m like this. I don’t know how to— what to say— if—”

Peter tugs on his hand and then cups his scarred cheek with his free hand. “You don’t need to be anything or anyone else but you. I don’t feel afraid or repulsed by you in this form, if that’s what worries you. I only see  _ you.”  _ He places his hand over Wade’s heart, hoping his face conveys how he feels right now.

But Wade laughs humorlessly. “This must be a dream. Yeah.” He steps back, but Peter doesn’t release the hold he has on Wade’s hand, instinct telling him to never let him go. “You’re— this is— no, it’s not real. This is just some deep part of my mind cooking up this fest to make me feel better. Yeah. It’s just a dream. Must be very lonely in the waking world if I made you up. Never encountered someone who ticks all my boxes — and I’m not talking about the talking ones — like you do. Really. My mind must be reaaaaally bored if—”

Peter makes a strangled, distressed noise that’s mostly in his throat as he grabs Wade’s shirt and pulls him into Peter, his face going into Wade’s neck. Never to kiss him on the lips. It’s not his to give. It’s not him who will break the curse. He knows, he knows. 

But. 

He can’t help feeling protective of Wade, especially when he’s like this, a wrong word away from falling apart. He  _ needs  _ to touch Wade, feel him close,  _ keep  _ him close so that he can be certain that if his mouth cannot properly voice the emotions running wild and scalding in his chest, then at least his body might be up for the job.

“I’m real. I’m here. I’m real, Wade. You’re real. This is real. We’re both here. Real,” he mutters desperately, even as he feels Wade shaking against him.

“It can’t be.” His voice breaks like Peter’s heart is breaking right now.

“Yes, Wade. It can be.”

“No. No.” He feels Wade shaking his head vehemently, but thank whoever’s out there that he doesn’t pull out of Peter’s arms. “This isn’t — it can’t be, you’re too perfect. Too perfect for me.”

Peter huffs a half-hearted laugh. “No, I’m not. I’ve flaws. Just like everybody else.”

“Not true.” And finally,  _ finally,  _ Wade hugs him back, but not with as much force as Peter. And it’s okay, it’s a beginning. “You’re perfect, baby boy.”

Peter stills. Not that he was moving much except breathing. He pulls his head back to look at the prince. Wade avoids his gaze.

“Is that gonna be a thing?” Peter asks, almost incredulously. He’s not sure what to think of the— pet name.

Wade glances at him. “It’s been on my mind for a while now.”

He feels the corners of his mouth quirk up, even as Wade avoids his gaze again. Peter suspects he’s warring with himself, a push-pull situation in which Wade would like nothing more than to go hide in the closet or under the bed until the curse recedes. But he also doesn’t seem to want to let Peter go just yet.

So Peter does the next best thing: he gently grazes Wade’s neck with his lips and nose and cheek. He feels the sharp intake of breath, the shudder coursing through the prince’s body, because Peter’s more pressed against him than not.

“Wade,” he tries his name again, on a croak, shifting his front a bit only to feel how Wade shudders, his arms twitching.

And then Wade’s hands move over Peter’s back, somehow pressing him closer still and feeling the lean muscles there at the same time. Peter exhales through his mouth right beneath Wade’s ear, his own body coming alive at that very moment.

“Yes,” he breathes out, as if Wade asked something of him already.

He’s not sure. Wade might have. He’s too mesmerized by the thunder in the prince’s chest he feels through his own, the heavy breathing, the warmth exuding from his front to mingle with Peter’s. He’s never felt this connected with all his senses before. It’s like Wade’s touch is made of fire and lightning, rising his skin’s sensitivity to sky levels.

But it’s not enough. Peter needs more. So he gently pushes Wade until his back presses into the nearest wall, which is right next to the closet, and his hands dare bury themselves underneath Wade’s shirt. 

“Peter,” Wade says on an exhale, even as his body trembles beneath Peter’s palms.

“I want to feel you,” he whispers the words into Wade’s neck, drunk on the feel of the prince’s sturdy body plastered to him. “Tell me if it’s too much.”

Wade doesn’t say anything and Peter’s compelled to stop, leaning back to search his face. There’s a flush hidden by the scars and slightly drunk eyes look back at Peter, his lips ajar to breathe. Peter has to swallow and rein himself in. 

Slowly, his hand lifts Wade’s shirt, the other gently caressing the bumpy skin, first to the right, over the hip, then up his side, splaying his fingers over Wade’s ribs. The prince sucks in a sudden breath, eyes closing and head thumping faintly against the wall.

Peter drinks in every single shift on Wade’s face, every exhale, every tremble of his lower lip. He wants to kiss him. By God, does he want. But he can’t.

He can’t.

Instead he leans in, keeping his hands active on his chest, not quite touching his nipples, as he ducks his head to press the kisses into the column of his neck and collarbone. They’re slow and linger too much as if he wants to impress the feeling of Wade’s scarred skin into them, so that whenever he touches his lips, he’ll remember.

Because this, right here and now, this belongs to Peter. Wade is his. And Peter is not letting him go.

His breath fans over Wade’s collarbone and he smiles when Wade shudders, delighting in the fact that it’s  _ him  _ who pulls out these reactions. It’s Peter’s fault that Wade cannot quite control them. And he  _ likes it.  _ It’s an addicting feeling.

And then he feels the prince’s palms caressing his back over the shirt, and he stills against Wade’s chest, letting him have his fill of Peter. He doesn’t expect Wade’s hands to skim down and palm Peter’s ass. His eyes fly up, but he only sees a scarred cheek and a tempting jaw, and he’s soon distracted by the knowledge that as big as Wade’s hands are, they can’t seem to fit all of Peter’s ass into them. Not to mention that his crotch is now pressed against Wade’s and Peter knew that he was getting hard by simply touching the prince, but he didn’t think for a second that the prince himself is just as affected by this as Peter is.

Suddenly, he wants his shirt gone, Wade’s shirt gone, their pants. Everything. He wants them naked. He wants to worship this perfectly imperfect man the way he’s supposed to. It has nothing to do with his royal blood, and everything to do with the person that hides behind the mask. The scarred, lonely, vulnerable man who is so affectionate with the ones around him that Peter’s glad he’s part of that.

“Peter,” he pants because Peter’s lost all control over his hips.

Not that Wade’s hands are not encouraging him to seek friction, but he started this with the intention of showing Wade that no matter what he looks like Peter still thinks highly and— affectionately about him.

“Yes,” he says and then places his hands on Wade’s hips, momentarily stopping the increasingly frantic thrusts. “But we only have the pair of pants on us.” Wade opens his eyes and Peter really  _ fucking _ wants to kiss him. “So—”

He gasps, eyes widening because Wade worked himself underneath Peter’s pants in the meantime and the uneven, scarred skin of his palms each grazing an ass cheek makes his hardness incredibly interested in the proceedings. Yet, Wade doesn’t stop there, even as Peter’s brain short-circuits on how much lust and possessiveness he can see in his blown pupils. One hand, though, comes to untie the string that’s keeping Peter’s pants from falling down, and Peter realizes that he should do the same.

He’s not sure how they both manage to free themselves enough so that both their pants pool at their feet, but he can’t stop staring at the prince.

It’s only when Wade bridges the distance between them that Peter suddenly remembers why he’s not mauling and kissing the living daylights out of the prince yet. Again, he deflects by turning his head at the last moment, feeling the charged air around them, the sensitivity his skin acquires where Wade’s lips press against his cheek.

“Baby boy, I want—”

“We can’t,” he whispers, panting slightly as both their hips move on their own accord.

“Why?” It’s broken and lust-filled in equal measure and Peter shudders because he’s so close to Wade that he can’t think straight.

He asks himself the same. Why? Why?  _ Why can’t they?  _

“I’m sorry,” he says against Wade’s collarbone as his forehead presses into the meaty part of his shoulder. “You know why.”

A choked kind of sound makes Peter lean back, but Wade presses a hard kiss into his hair and keeps him there, increasing the speed of Peter’s hips, and they both gasp.

“I won’t let you go,” Wade murmurs, a furious and ragged quality to the words, into his crown of hair. “Never. I won’t.”

Peter’s eyes sting, pressed shut so that he can let his other senses take over. He knows it’s a lie. A wretchedly beautiful lie that Peter’s traitorous heart believes with everything it’s got.

He chokes on a gasp as lust takes over and he clings to Wade for dear life, one hand pressed against his chest while the other’s on his hip, both chasing the climax that finds them all too soon with gasps and wounded sounds. They pant, Peter into Wade’s neck, Wade just above Peter’s ear.

Peter’s the one who goes to the chest, bare legged, and soaks the towel into the cold water. Wade got the worst of their impromptu session. He only glances up at the prince every once in a while as he cleans him, not catching his gaze once.

It’s not awkward, not really, but there’s a held breath between them as they both pull up their pants and Peter goes to snuff out the candles. He feels slightly better when he climbs into the bed and Wade pushes his back into Peter’s front. Peter snakes his arm over his middle and beneath his shirt to place his palm over the center of Wade’s chest. 

He falls asleep to Wade hugging Peter’s arm to his chest.

***

Peter’s chuckles fill Wade’s chest with the most wondrous of feelings, a rich, fulsome quality to it that dissolves the memories of the spider.

_ And the drolling. _

**Am I the only one who was turned on by the possessiveness?**

Wade’s grin could very well become a permanent scar on his face. Or rather one that comes out only in response to Peter’s mirth.

“I’m not lying,” Wade says.

“But you’re not saying the truth, either.”

“I might’ve embellished some things here and there.”

“So you’re saying you did not actually parade in front of your subjects in your nannies’ dress?”

“Ah, no, that I did. Was made to write the Great Deeds of John The Righteous, the very first king of this land, from cover to cover for my trouble. And lemme tell ya, that’s one boring book— well, not anymore. I doodled unicorns with swords and spears.” He frowns, recalling what came after his tutor discovered them. “As punishment I was then put to write on a chalkboard the Maiden and Her Stud, a three hundred four pages long poem about this lady who’s always rescued by this horse she received from her father right before he was killed in battle.”

Peter sniggers, shaking his head, as the first thatched roofs appear below the hill they were climbing. They have a forest on their left, while the right side of the road is just hills and cultivated land, now that they’re nearing Peter’s village. 

Wade pushes his head up into the gentle early summer breeze, enjoying the warmth of the sun rays and the company of the man at his side. 

“You remind me of my aunt,” Peter says and it jars Wade out of his little bubble.

“Uh?”

There’s a fond expression on his face that punches the air out of Wade’s lungs and makes his joints feel unstable and liquid. But also a tinge of sadness there. As far as Wade knows, from what Peter’s told him, his aunt is still very much alive. So why the sad eyes?

They’re walking so close now that Wade’s hand skims Peter’s, unsure if he wants to hold it or just tease the cushy underside of it. But Peter snatches it and twines his fingers between Wade’s.

**I’m in heaven.**

_ We all are. Kinda feel like when this will be over we’ll just plunge to the ground with a big, red SPLAT. _

Wade squeezes Peter’s hand, the skip in his heartbeat followed by the warmest, fluffiest feeling ever. He doesn’t know how or where this self-control comes from, but he craves the feeling of Peter against him, his skin smoothing over his scars. He has to take a deep, fortifying breath to keep himself from pushing Peter into the bushes and maul him against a tree.

“Yeah,” Peter say, a softness to his voice, his shoulder and arm brushing against Wade’s. “The way you pushed your head up to enjoy the sun. I noticed aunt May does that whenever she feels overwhelmingly happy, and it’s always in relation to my uncle.”

His chest feels ten times smaller and it’s hard to breathe when he glances down and sees the fragile smile on Peter’s lips, how it dares to come to life, hopeful and yet so, so vulnerable.

He stops in his tracks, which has Peter turn to face Wade, a question in his eyes.

“Peter, I—”

“Peter?” an unfamiliar female voice chimes from behind Peter. A woman carrying a covered basket on her left forearm emerges from the trees, her blond hair tied in a loose bun at the base of her skull, the hem of her light blue dress, a white apron covering the lower half, swinging left and right with the breeze. “Is that you?”

“Gwen?”

Wade can’t focus on anything else except the loss of Peter’s warmth and hand as he turns his back on Wade to greet this woman who he seems to be intimately acquainted with. They hug.  _ Hug.  _

“God!” she says, wrinkling her nose. “You stink of decaying meat and rotten fruit! What happened to you?” Yet she squeezes him harder against her.

**Disgusting! I say we slice her up as soon as he lets her go.**

_ Yeah, sure. And then have his wrath be the only sentiment he’ll ever hold for us. _

Wade grumbles unhappily in his mind. He pushes back the dark thoughts because Peter’s looking at him with a nervous smile, and he realizes that he lost a good portion of their conversation.

“Hi,” the woman says, taking a step forward and lifting a delicate hand up between them.

**She wants us to chop it, right?**

“I’m Gwen, Peter’s best friend,” she continues with an amused smile.

**Ah.**

_ So no chopping or slicing in the near future, eh? _

**Depends. Best friend is closer to lover than just a simple friend.**

“Enchanted,” Wade says, bringing up his most charming smile as he delicately shakes hands with Gwen. “I’m Wade.”

She blushes.

**Well, look at us! So smooth! Didn’t know we still got it in us.**

_ We charmed the robe off of Death, and tumbled with a troll twice our size. _

**Before he chopped our head off.**

_ Ugh. That took  _ forever  _ to grow back. Anywhoo, I’d say we’re as smooth as you can get. _

**Unless we turn into an ass hole turned inside out and left to cook in the sun. Then we magically lose all the charm and prince-like behavior.**

_ We can’t have it all. _

Wade glances at Peter, taking in the encouraging, if nervous smile, and thinks:  _ I’m not sure, I might actually have it all.  _

“Such a gentleman,” she murmurs, the amusement in her eyes overshadowing the flush on her cheeks. She steps back and leans towards Peter in an exaggerated manner. “And you’re sure he’s not some foreign prince you whisked away with your oblivious charms?”

Peter splutters and an actual flush spreads over his cheeks which Wade drinks in like the thirstiest man alive. Or not. He chuckles, which brings Gwen’s attention back on him. So that’s what Wade missed out from the first part of the conversation. Peter didn’t tell her who Wade really was. Good. He can play with that.

“You’re too kind, my fair lady.” And he bends at the waist in a mocking bow, keeping his mischievous smile firm in place, even as his eyes don’t stray from Peter’s. “But I’m simply a traveler who crossed paths with your friend here. He’s been kind enough to show me the way towards the castle.”

Her lips press together in a moue of barely-concealed disgust. “So you’re going to meet his Royal I-forgot-my-name-and-I-need-my-subjects-to-remind-me?”

“Gwen,” Peter admonishes softly.

She huffs, her free hand planting itself on her hip. “What? Am I wrong? What with his ‘what’s my name?’ whenever he comes by and thinks that that’s the best way to incite a crowd. Leave us alone and stop taking so much in taxes once summer is over and we might even pray for you before sleeping.”

So this lord wasn’t seen with good eyes. A precious information Wade tucks away.

“Gwen?” Another woman’s voice butts in, this time a red-head climbing the small hill to where they were, followed by a tall, dark-haired man carrying a basket not unlike Gwen’s. “What are you doing standing in the middle of—  _ oh my god,  _ Peter is that you?!”

And Peter barely lifts a hand to wave awkwardly at this woman before she runs and jumps straight into his arms, almost toppling them both off, if it wasn’t for Peter’s core strength.

**Is this a custom in these lands?**

_ Oh, stop sounding like you’re sharpening your swords in preparation to slaughter an entire village. She’s surely another best friend. _

**He has ** ** _too many _ ** **best friends.**

_ What? You didn’t think for a second that he might be popular where he lives? _

***grumbles***

“Hello, Gwen,” the man greets with an amused smile, stopping a respectful distance at Wade’s side.

“Yo, Harry. Think she might succeed in making him pass out this time?” she asks, her tone teasing, even if Wade cannot taste the amusement behind.

His whole skin prickles and itches with the need to pry that woman off Peter.

Harry huffs. “I’m not sure. It’s been almost a month since they last saw each other. She might attempt.”

Gwen sniggers. “Oh, right. Since Peter’s busy being hugged within an inch of his life by your lovely wife, lemme do the introductions.” The ‘wife’ pulls Wade’s attention to Gwen, noticing the glint in her eyes. “This is Wade, he’s been traveling with Peter from wherever Peter went off to. And this is Harry, MJ’s — that is the red-head hugging our friend there — husband. They’re still in their honeymoon, actually.”

_ Harry  _ looks mildly embarrassed, even as they shake hands.

“Nice to meet you,” Wade says, recalling that he can be charming, even when most of his attention is still with Peter and his muffled words against MJ’s arm.

“Likewise,” Harry says. “So you met Peter on the road?”

He glances back at Peter, really feeling like he wants to both go and take that woman off him and make nice talk with Peter’s friends.

“Yeah,” he gets out, distractedly.

Gwen laughs. “Do you think MJ will listen now that she’s had her share?” There’s a knowing lilt in her voice as she says that, but Wade’s not really paying attention to her.

There’s amusement in Harry’s voice even as Wade inches towards Peter. “Hopefully, not only for Peter’s sake. MJ, love,” he calls out with the sort of fondness and love that feels like a hook dragging through Wade’s insides, “do you think you could let poor Peter go so you can greet his new friend here?” 

He wants that— that level of domesticity.

MJ finally reliquishes her hold on Peter and he lets her down gently. She still smacks a kiss on his cheek with some murmured words that make Peter look down bashfully.

**That’s it! Get out the katanas!**

“Hey there,” MJ says with the most brilliant smile Wade’s seen on a woman’s face; the boxes quiet down at once and Wade feels off-kilter being the only thing her entire attention focuses on. “I’m Mary Jane, but friends call me MJ, so you should too.”

“I’m Wade,” he murmurs, losing all the charm he’s been fueled with. 

“Aren’t you a cute one?” 

She actually, honest to Rosie, _ pinches his cheeks! _

**[blank]**

_ I think she just managed to break Yellow. Hey, friend, my pal, the dark side to my logic one, you okay there?  _

“So what are you two doing here?” MJ asks, siddling at her husband’s side, both arms linking around his free one. He kisses her head softly, as if it’s the most natural thing to do.

**I hate them!**

_ Oh! He lives! Do you really hate them? ‘Cause not long ago you went all blushy-blushy because she pinched our cheeks. _

**Hey! We didn’t see that one coming, okay?**

_ She’s a surprising woman, isn’t she? _

**… she is.**

“We’re heading towards the castle,” Peter chimes in helpfully.

The same moue of disgust shuts off the serene expression on MJ’s face, too. Well, this lord is receiving a lot of (bad) commendations. He glances down at Peter. Just who is Peter whisking him off to?

“Cute,” MJ says without much inflection. “Well, I haven’t seen you for more than a full moon cycle, so you can’t get out of dinner with us. You’re invited, too, Wade. And I don’t accept a no. Gwen, honey, you’re more than welcome, too.”

“Who’s cooking?” Gwen asks.

“Harry.”

“Then I’m in!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” MJ says, her loose fist propped on her hip, as she squints at her friend.

“No offense, honey, but apart from boiled potatoes, there’s not much else that my stomach can handle from you. I’m amazed your husband didn’t come down with anything.”

Wade tunes them out as they bicker, Harry butting in (un)helpfully from time to time. He sees the amused quirk of his mouth as he gazes from one lady to the next and Wade might be reading too much into it, but— 

“So,” Peter says, low enough that he doesn’t attract his friends’ attention. Low and intimate, only for Wade to hear. The thrill is unmistakable. “Do you want to make a pit stop at MJ and Harry’s house? Knowing them we won’t be getting out of there until tomorrow morning. Are you okay with that?”

Wade looks at the three friends, Gwen laughing raucously and so un-lady-like that Wade instantly falls platonically for her, MJ frowning at her husband as she slaps his biceps while Harry chuckles good-naturedly.

“I think— I might want to know your friends better,” Wade says it like an after-thought, his brain not quite present at the moment the words are out.

It’s the silence at his side that has Wade turn his attention back to Peter only to see a strange expression on his face. Something between considering and something else, shrouded in shadows.

“Uh, I think that came out wrong. I meant—”

“No,” Peter shakes his head, “it’s okay. I understand.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, you miss being around people,” Peter says and they both become aware of the silence from the other side.

All three of them watch Peter and Wade with something that goes beyond curiosity.

“What’s that Peter’s saying?” asks Gwen. “You haven’t been around people? Where have you been, then?”

“Ah,” Peter begins, but flounders.

“I traveled the mountains,” Wade adds, as surprised at the save as Peter is.

“You did?” Harry says.

Wade nods. “Yep. Big, cold rocks. Lonely, too.”

They all look like they can’t quite accept Wade’s explanation, but they let it drop after that, Gwen leading the way to MJ and Harry’s house. Peter and Wade walk a few steps behind, neither quite managing to stop their hands or shoulders from brushing each other. Wade wouldn’t be able to pick his way back as he can’t stop glancing as subtly as he knows how to at Peter, enjoying the little amused expression on his face.

The house they enter is small, but welcoming. One room that is divided between a kitchen in the far corner, a ladder to the other side leading to an overhead floor made of planks on which hay covered in a sheet makes up a rather large bed, and behind the ladder another sheet, blue-grey in color, shields the other corner from prying eyes. Right next to the door and right in front of the two windows a table that could accommodate up to six people sits adorned with a lovely cloth in red, white and blue and a copper chalice containing a handful of white, pink, and yellow peonies. 

He has to fully enter the house to see the wooden bench behind the table, covered in pillows and blankets, a black yarn ball and a half-finished vest, Wade judges from this distance, lying forgotten on the small chest at the side.

“Of course,” MJ says as she places her basket down on the floor between the stove and the wall, just beneath a small window, “you’ll be spending the night here. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough space here, but the barn is more than accommodating. We’re thinking of extending the house towards it and make it more spacious.”

“That’s the first I’m hearing,” Peter says, coming to stand between the table and the windows, his fingers idly caressing the petals of the peonies, as Harry disappears somewhere behind the curtains and Gwen sprawls herself on the bench.

“Of course it is,” MJ says, not without implying that it’s Peter’s fault. “I come back from visiting Harry’s hometown and you’re nowhere to be found. Not even Gwen knew where you went off to.”

Peter shrugs, not quite taking his eyes off the flowers. “Maybe I went to visit Aunt May.”

“Try another one,” Gwen chimes from beneath the forearm thrown over her face. “I received a letter from her two days ago asking about your whereabouts. Where did you disappear off to, anyway? And don’t feed us the old ‘went for a stroll and got lost’ because we all know that your sense of direction rivals Harry’s. And he’s a hunter.”

Peter purses his lips and glances at Wade. He’s not sure what he’s reading there is a plea for help or simply a way for Peter to anchor himself. Maybe they should stop lying to his friends and come clean. Certainly, Wade doesn’t have a problem with that. He’s grateful that Peter left the decision to tell his friends who he really is to Wade, but these two are worse than tracking hounds. It’s like they can  _ smell  _ Peter’s bullshit from a mile away.

It’d be funny, if Wade wasn’t so distracted by everything Peter was.

He takes a seat next to Peter, one forearm placed idly on the table while the other one — the one near Peter — hangs up on the edge of the backseat and slowly sneaks his palm beneath Peter’s shirt, splaying his fingers over the warm small of Peter’s back.

He sucks in a breath through his nose, more felt by Wade rather than heard. Wade pats himself on the back for keeping a straight face even if he feels the grin pushing to the surface.

The women don’t seem to notice this, and then Harry returns with an arm full of chopped wood, which he dumps near MJ’s feet. She’s stirring the contents of a pot and when he gets up he gathers her into an one-arm hug and kisses her temple, murmuring something that makes her chuckle.

Wade’s ring and little finger dip underneath Peter’s trousers band and Peter sits down on the other chair abruptly, sending Wade a glare. He grins in response, as his hand finds Peter’s knee under the table, just for Peter to try to bat it away.

“MJ,” Gwen says as she stands up, Wade only being dimly aware of the others’ presence and what they’re talking about. “You needed water for tonight, didn’t you?” She doesn’t even wait for her friend to answer, as she turns her attention on Wade and Peter. “Wade, come on. I’ll need all that muscle you prance around to carry the buckets.”

Wade’s head darts up in surprise, not expecting anyone to address him with such familiarity— least of all give him orders.

_ But we like her, so we’re good. _

**Do I hear bias there, White?**

_ Shut up. You have the hots for MJ. I’m choosing Gwen. _

**I don’t have the ‘hots’ for MJ!**

_ Mhm, and neither one of us is head over tits for Peter. Sure. Whatever makes you sleep at night. _

“I don’t— prance around,” Wade says, going for affronted but coming out meek.

Peter snorts.

He’s not sure why he’s been chosen by Gwen to do such a task as she hands him one bucket and she takes the other, but he doesn’t have a good feeling about this. 

They exit the house through the backdoor behind the curtains.

He lets her take the lead, both because he doesn’t know his way around and because she commands a certain respect. She’s quiet as she opens the door in the hip-high fence on the left side of the house, and waits for Wade to go through before she latches the rough rope over the other part. 

He trails after her down a beaten path following the curve of the hill the house is on. The fence is facing towards the open hills and circles the backyard full of chickens, geese, four turkeys and a couple of dogs who didn’t bark at Wade probably only because Gwen was with him, as well as a big barn whose doors were open.

“Where are we going?” Wade asks, and realizes how dumb it sounds. “Unless you’re trying to push me off a cliff somewhere and be done with me. Then I suggest we find a higher cliff because— I don’t die that easily.”

She slants a glance at him as he walks at her side. “Not good with death, are you?”

“Something like that.” How can he be so nervous around this woman?

“Funny you say that because I’ve been hearing stories about this man further down South who could fly a dragon and who always came to the aid of the ones in need. Or the ones who had too much on their hands.”

“Sounds like a good samaritean. Though I’m not sure about the bit with the dragon.”

“Right? I didn’t believe that either. Who could even be able to tame a dragon? Even wizards have trouble with that— or so the belief goes. As you can see we’re a small village on a small plot of land governed by an arrogant, wretched, narcissistic prick who fancies himself to be the best thing since leather shoes. But we’re not stupid. At least not us three.”

“Okay?” Wade doesn’t have a good feeling about where this is going.

She hums as they descend towards the little creek at the base of the hill. 

“The stories also describe this man,” she continues, her tone of voice revealing nothing of what she has in mind— or in store for Wade. “They say he always wears this deep red shirt and black pants, and always, always has two swords on his back that he brandishes against whoever opposes him.”

The skin under the leather strap around his torso itches, but he resists scratching at it through sheer willpower.

“Sorry, never met this man,” Wade says when the silence stretches on for too long. “But if I ever cross paths with him I can ask he write a poem exalting your natural beauty or a dirty limerick.”

She releases a laugh just as they reach the bottom of the hill.

“Wade,” she says just as he bends down to let the bucket sink halfway into the creek.

“Hm?”

“I’m no hunter or warrior, and even if I can deal a lot of damage with my broom, it still wouldn’t be enough. But don’t forget one thing,” she straightens up, her bucket dripping water near her leg as she faces him with the most serene expression she has showed him so far, “I know my way with knitting needles and crocheting hooks. If you ever break Peter’s heart, they’ll be the last thing you see before they pierce through your skull.”

Wade’s rooted to the spot as he lets her words sink in.

_ I think— I think I have more than a thing for her. _

***rolls eyes***

“Never forget that,” she continues, “all three of us love and dote on him even if he never lets us take it too far. If we’d be left to do as we wish, we’d take him in one of our homes instead of letting him live alone in the forest. But he likes his space and we understand his need to just be alone with himself.”

And just like that, she turns and begins the trek back to the house. There is no way in every kingdom known and unknown to him that he can begin to express what this Talk does to him. 

_ Did she break him? _

**I think she did.**

_ Well, well, well. _

**Yeah, leave it to Peter to have such badass friends.**

_ Now I’m jealous he never talked about them. He kept these gems all to himself. _

“We should head back,” Gwen calls out, amusement filling her voice, “before Peter starts suspecting the real reason why I brought you along. If he hasn’t already.”

It’s like magic, his feet return back to him and he catches up to her in no time.

“What gave it away?” Wade finds himself asking, not as much to fill the silence of the trek as the question has been circling in his mind ever since she threatened him.

“You mean besides the hand holding, obvious glances, and you looking at MJ as if you were two seconds away from chopping her head off if she didn’t let Peter go?” she asks with the same lilt in her voice she had before.

Wade opens his mouth, then closes it. “That obvious?”

“Yep. But you’re less subtle than Peter is. I think he knows what he can expect from us. You don’t. Or you don’t know how to conceal your feelings.”

**I told you we needed a mirror to practice!**

_ Practice what? How to make goo-goo eyes without them actually turning into heart shapes? _

Wade falls silent after that and Gwen is content to let him mull it over. Just as they enter the house, Gwen almost topples over Peter.

“The hell, Peter? Trying to scare the allergy out of me?”

But his eyes by-pass her to settle on Wade’s, a funny expression on his face. Wade can’t help the smarmy grin from showing up, even as he notices that his hair is wet and he has a different shirt on, wider around his shoulders. The vest is nowhere to be seen.

“I see you have no luck with the ladies,” Wade says because he needs to say something. There’s too much going on in his heart right now to trust himself with anything more than senseless babbling. “Scaring them is not the fastest way towards their hearts.”

Peter simply steps aside to let Gwen pass, not saying anything even as Wade steps up to him, close enough that they both feel each other’s warmth through their clothes. He smells like soap and— lavender. Expensive stuff.

“Everything okay, baby boy?” he murmurs, stopping himself from cupping his cheek and leaning down to kiss him, but only just. 

Peter draws in a surprised breath and it might be because Wade’s looking so intently at him, but he sees how Peter sways softly towards Wade, how his chest rises and falls quicker than before.

It slipped, okay? The endearment simply flowed out with the rest of the words because this moment right here is just Wade’s and Peter’s. The others don’t matter. What tomorrow reserves for them doesn’t matter, either. He just wants to be selfish and steal these precious moments away from the others. He’s drinking Peter in like the thirsty man that he is, because yes, he’s been thirsty all his life and he never even knew it until Peter entered came around.

“What’s the fastest way?” Harry calls from behind the curtain, jolting both of them from the little bubble they created around themselves. “Eh, Wade?”

And because Wade can’t quite help himself, not when Peter’s dark eyes gaze so intently up at him, he leans in just that little bit, hands catching Peter’s hips and pulling him closer, before he presses his lips to his forehead, closing his eyes to draw out the moment as much as possible.

“You bring her flowers,” Wade calls back, stepping back and grinning at a slightly dazed Peter. 

Somebody snorts and Wade leaves Peter to entertain his friends until he pulls himself together. Not that Wade’s better what with a wild heart trying to beat its way back to the man he left in the doorway.

“What if you’re a jerk and she knows it?” Harry continues, his eyes full of mirth as Peter’s friends are already seated at the table, the seats he and Peter occupied earlier left open.

“Then you get yourself into poetry. Learn as many as you can and use them to describe her beauty and her depth—ful bosom.”

Raucous laughter fills the room as Wade comes to stand behind his chair. Peter emerges not long after, a polite smile plastered on his face. He takes his seat and Wade follows suit.

“Bullshit!” Gwen calls out, each taking turns to ladle food into their plates. Harry is the first to start, but only to fill MJ’s plate before he passed the ladle to Gwen.

“I doubt that would work with a woman in full possession of common sense,” MJ says with a little uptilt of her chin.

“I don’t know,” Peter chimes in as Wade motions for him to push his plate closer so he can scoop stew onto it. No one bats an eyelid at this. “I haven’t encountered many women possessing even a glimmer of that.”

“You haven’t met a lot of people. Period,” Gwen says.

“How would you know that, hm?” And that tone of voice has Wade glance at a Peter whose entire expression is a challenge all unto itself. 

“I just do.” Gwen doesn’t really cross her arms, even if her words suggest that, and there’s a bit of stubbornness peeking in her narrowed eyes as well as in her words.

“You don’t,” Peter counters.

“Okay, kids,” MJ butts in. “No fighting at the table.”

“She started it!”

“Of course! Always blame the youngest!” She throws up her hands and Peter grins rakishly at her until everyone laughs at their little tantrum.

They eat and continue to talk about everything of importance and not. MJ goes into a rather detailed account of her honeymoon, some bits making Harry blush and try to hide it by almost sinking his head in his own plate, while Peter and Gwen groan intermittently and try to deviate MJ from the spicy stuff.

Wade chuckles here and there and eats his share, feeling like a missing piece slotted itself into a cold, dark place inside him just to warm it up from the inside. Slowly, his hand gravitates down under the table and on Peter’s thigh, kneading softly at the meaty part there. It doesn’t take long for Peter’s own hand to cover his, not to stop him, but to squeeze it as if he wants to reassure Wade. Or himself. Or both.

They help clean the table and then do the dishes using the water from one bucket, then Gwen hugs each one of them (even Wade, and it doesn’t hurt even though he expects this slender woman to try and crush his rib cage— just as a second warning or something) and then bids them goodnight.

The sun hasn’t started setting fully yet, but it is heading that way, so Peter yawns and excuses both of them.

“Promise you won’t disappear before we can see you off properly,” MJ says, lifting a warning finger.

“Promise,” Peter says with a nod.

The barn has enough hay and ballots of hay stacked onto each other to give them plenty of space, comfort and privacy (from the two cows and two horses inhabiting the space). MJ gave Wade two pillows and two covers, but just as Wade places them down and throws the pillows somewhere in the middle of the hay, Peter pushes him on his back.

“Oof? Wha—”

He has an inkling about what brought this on.

“You okay, baby boy?” he murmurs into his hair, arms coming around Peter just as the transformation takes hold.

He closes his eyes, trying to focus on Peter’s weight and the feel of his back beneath his palms instead of the pull of his skin as it draws in. But he opens them when Peter pushes himself up and straddles his hips with his knees, as well as brackets his head between his forearms.

There’s enough light streaming in through the small window above their heads, the beam hitting the opposite wall, that it casts the whole barn into a dark, warm color. 

He can’t read Peter though, but the long staring feels like he’s trying to find the best words to make Wade understand. What? He’s not sure. Then he presses his forehead against Wade’s and breathes in and out as if he’s trying to keep his control from frying at the edges.

“Peter, please,” Wade whispers, eyes closed, his own hands caressing Peter’s back twice before they dip beneath his shirt and Peter sucks in a breath as his whole body undulates once.

“I—” But he cuts himself off with a frustrated sound pushed through his nose.

He buries his head into Wade’s scarred neck, and Wade can’t do anything but hold him close and hope that Peter will eventually tell him everything that he seems to struggle to keep in.

He doesn’t and they fall asleep like that, both holding onto the other for dear life in a barn that smells of cows and horses.

MJ and a still sleepy Harry see them off the next morning as promised. Wade feels like he’s being forcefully sent away from his home. Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow the last two chapters will be up!


	5. Chapter 5

***

With a deep breath his feet step from a dusty beaten path to the wood of the front gate, keeping to one side as there is traffic in and out of the castle. Just as he’s about to pass underneath the arch where two archers stand watch above the two soldiers posted on each side of the gate, he turns and looks back at the forest sprawling over the hill and the mountain slope in the distance.

Peter said that if he follows the first beaten path that diverges right from the main road leading to the village and keeps it up for about an hour he will come upon a meadow and then, slightly to the left he should see a cottage with a side fence. That’s his garden. And that’s his cottage.

Wade wants nothing more than to go there and see it— him.

Why is he doing this again?

He already found his prince. He’s right there, two or three hours away!

No boxes come to comment. They’ve been silent the whole way as if Wade’s been sent to hang. He snorts and looks back at the huge inner yard with people milling about, makeshift stands with everything from clothes to food to pottery scattered in a bit of a disarray. Peter refused to come with him the whole way down the slope of the hill. He didn’t offer an explanation, at least not one that Wade believed. He almost kissed him right there and then, but Peter’s closed off body language and the shifty eyes, not meeting Wade’s once, told him enough to keep himself from making such a move.

It still hurt, but he understood where Peter was coming from. He didn’t like it. Not one fucking bit. But he also wanted to get rid of this curse and if Peter didn’t fully return Wade’s feelings, then the kiss he kept asking for would’ve revealed everything.

And Peter was told to bring Wade to this lord. Whatever they had during their journey back had just been— temporary.

Maybe Peter didn’t actually love him. Maybe he was just infatuated with the thought of bedding a prince.

But when has he ever proven to Wade that he was that shallow?

See, that’s what makes this so hard and confusing and  _ fucking hell, Peter, come back here and explain yourself!  _

With an impatient sigh he approaches the nearest guard, feeling his aristocratic upbringing coming up. He thought he didn’t have it him anymore.

“Hey there,” he says, the rush of aristocracy leaving his bones as quickly as it surged. He even waves with a smile he doesn’t feel. “You chummy with the lord here?”

“What?” the guard blinks at him, his hand gripping the spear tighter.

“I said if you know the lord here, silly.”

The guard glances at his companion on the other side of the gate, but the man is so bored he almost slouches on the wall.

“Of course I do. He hired me to protect this gate.”

Wade nods with all the enthusiasm of someone who held such a job in high regard.

“Yes, I can see that. Wonderful job you’re doing. The gate looks beside itself in your protection. Can you tell him that Prince Wade Wilson is here to see him without fanfare? I hear he’s the one who sent to rescue me. Gotta pay those respects.”

The guard stares. By the looks of his face and height he doesn’t look older than— Peter. No, scratch that. He looks younger than even Gwen. What’s the minimum age lords draft their soldier? Wade frowns a bit, hoping the number his mind whispers is not true.

“Did you hear me, boy?” The command suffuses his words, which snaps the poor guard to attention, his armor clinking uncomfortably. “Chop chop, I don’t have the whole day.”

He really didn’t. But he hopes this lord is in and takes the young guard’s word for the truth it is and not make Wade wait at his door. He remembers what his father did to a duke once, shortly after he was cursed, when he went to visit him un-announced and the duke left him waiting at his gate for half an hour. Half an hour and his father stripped him of his royal rank and sent him to live in the village that borders with their enemies.

Wade hasn’t heard about him ever since. He might be dead or he might have struck a deal with their enemies or lies drunk in a ditch somewhere.

The rhythmic clink of armor attracts his attention from where his eyes strayed back to the forest and the promised cottage that lies somewhere in its midst. Three guards stop a few steps from him, the one in the front wearing a decorative red cape and his helmet has a black plume adorning it.

“Your royal highness,” he bows low enough that Wade can see his nape. “We were expecting you a day earlier.”

He lifts an eyebrow, in the mood to play the prince. “So your lord’s kitchens are empty? My loyal subjects have forgotten me? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, of course not,” he’s fast to reassure, straightening up.

“Then take me to your lord. Why am I being kept waiting?”

**[applauds]**

_ It’s like we didn’t even live two decades in mostly solitude and about six years training with the Yiga clan. _

**And chatting with Lee the past few years.**

_ Aw, I miss that wizard. He delivers the best punchline jokes! And he gave us Rosie. _

He’s escorted through the bustling yard and into the castle, up a long set of stairs, through a short hallway, and finally left in a room that’s dimly lit by the many candles lying on various pieces of furniture.

He’s about to open every window he can find, when his skin prickles with the sensation that he’s being watched.

“I see you have finally arrived,” a man’s smooth voice comes from behind Wade.

Wade turns only to be met with air and the lazy flicker of the candles. But something is moving among the darkest corners of the room, where the warm light cannot dispel the shadows, yet he can’t quite see what. And he doesn’t have as much trouble to see in the dark as normal people do, so this person must be a master at blending in. Or using magic.

That doesn’t sit well with Wade. 

If this person is the lord and turns out to also be a wizard, then Wade is in deep, deep shit. There has never been, in the history of this kingdom, a wizard on the throne. The power imbalance there would threaten the very future of his people.

“Whom am I speaking to?” His royal blood comes out of his mouth, making him keep his hands loosely connected at his back, chest pushed forward and chin lifted in that aristocratic way that not even two decades of near seclusion managed to cure him of.

But his whole body is a pulsing, tense muscle, coiled and ready to spring into action should he have to.

“The lord that rescued you.” The man steps out of the shadows. “Lord Ajax Powers.”

Wade takes him in, the black silk of his lordly clothes, the thigh long cape, the coiffed hair, and then that glint in his eyes, so dark and threatening that Wade can’t stop the shiver running down his spine. He knows instinctively that he’s sharing a room with a predator.

But what this predator doesn’t seem to notice is that Wade is far from being the prey. Lord Ajax looks around.

“Are you looking for something?” Wade can’t help but ask.

“Hm, I was looking for… the spider.”

He takes a step forward eagerly. “Do you know him?”

The lord flutters a hand dismissively. “Barely.”

Wade frowns, a sinking feeling pulling his stomach down. “He’s—”

“A nuisance.” 

Ajax approaches him, his feet silent on the floorboards. Wade doesn’t quite step back, no, his upbringing and years of training doesn’t let him, but the motion is there, thrumming under his skin.

“Now,” Ajax begins when he’s a few steps away from Wade, a thin smile stretching his plump lips. “You have something that belongs to me, Crown Prince of the Far Far Away Kingdom,” he says it softly, calmly, as if Wade cannot feel the hostility coming in waves from him.

Wade measures him from toe to head and head to toe, taking his sweet time before he stops on the not-quite black gaze. There are swirls of blue after every blink. But Wade’s vision might play tricks on him since they’re in that dingy-lit room. He goes to the window and pushes out the wooden shades. 

“You don’t have the look of someone whose heart I stole.” He snorts, leaning against the windowsill, arms crossed, not letting the man out of his sight. “Literally. Or is this some dubious foreplay in which I’m about to be ravished against the cold stones. Because if so, then I need to prepare myself. A bath would be perfect for my delicate nethers. Hot, not cold. You need to warm up this body before attempting to touch it, sweetcheeks.”

Ajax frowns, his mouth pressing into a disgusted line. “That’s not what I mean.”

He gasps theatrically. “Don’t tell me! You’ve been after the throne this whole time? Oh my gosh!” He frames his face with his palms, throwing himself into making the gasping expression of somebody in shock as real as possible. 

In two strides Ajac grabs his biceps, his grip bruising and not at all like he wants to play this charade any longer.

“You know what you stole from me.”

“Stole?” Now Wade frowns, looking closely at the lord. “Nah, nothing comes to mind. When did I even steal anything from you? I don’t remember seeing you before today.”

“Not now. Years back,” he says through gritted teeth.

Wade blinks, then with his free hand he scratches his head. “Were you the owner of that cart of polished armor I stole a year ago? Because if so, I’m sorry pal, but you’re not gonna fit this kingdom’s enemies with armor that should go towards protecting the people here.”

“What the fuck are you on about?”

“No.” Wade takes back his arm and puts some distance between them. “What the fuck are  _ you  _ on about? I stole a great many things across these two decades. You gotta be more specific here.”

“Think about what started all your problems, more than twenty years ago.”

Wade blinks, his mind going sloppily down the rabbit hole through major and minor events he can think of that happened ever since his parents sent him to— 

“You’re the dragon egg’s owner?”

“ **I AM THE FUCKING DRAGON!** ” he roars and Wade steps back in shock.

“Well,” he says in the ensuing tomb silence. “That’s a  _ hell  _ of a plot twist. Are you sure I’m in the right story?”

“You’re going to give me back what you took from me all those years ago,” Ajax says, low and guttural as if he can’t quite keep a hold of his voice.

“Or else?”

“I’m gonna incinerate you right where you stand.”

“When I said that you gotta warm this body before touching it, I didn’t mean it quite so literally and aggressively. You gotta be gentle with me. I’m of royal blood, after all. No need to be—”

“Shut the fuck up and give me back my power!”

“And how am I supposed to do that? Are there any magic words I need to recite? Dubious potion I need to drink? Kiss some toad and get the prince I deserve. No, wait, I already  _ have  _ a prince, and he’s not a toad, but has like six legs — not counting the human ones — and three pairs of eyes, an ass to drool over and a smile to die for.”

Ajax closes his eyes, taking deep breaths, in and out. “You moronic idiot. You need to kiss me to—”

_ “EW!”  _ Wade grimaces, putting distance between them. “Not gonna happen. You might be disgustingly handsome — and I should pat my own back for that because it’s all thanks to this royal, handsome chunk of meat — but after you revealed your entire evil plan I refuse to touch you.”

Ajax chuckles. “Entire evil plan? Do you think my only reason for putting up with that annoying mouth of yours is only to get my dragon powers back? You fool!”

“Uh-oh, villain cursing alert! Where’s the green to go with your black?”

Wade blinks and Ajax is right there, breath mingling with Wade’s own. “You will give me back my power if it’s the last thing you do.”

With that he leaves the room like a seething storm during nighttime. Wade passes his fingers through his hair, releases a long sigh and wonders what the best course of action is in this mess.

**We can always chop his head off. If we took his powers and he’s human because of us, then that means he’s also mortal.**

Wade paces because that is not such a bad idea. But he’s never killed anyone except Yiga clan members. Never a human. Or— half-human.

_ You could kill him and then be remembered as the Assassin Prince or some other romantic name like that by historians. _

**That’s perfect for us! This kingdom needs a bit of spice in its history books. No more boring deeds done by John the Righteous or Sanna The Virtuous. We’ll entertain generations with our deadly deeds.**

_ Or speed our death. It’s always 50\50 with peasants. _

“Subjects,” Wade mutters as he perches on the edge of a plush chair. “They’re my subjects and they need my help.”

**How come you care about them now? We’ve been lounging at the ruins for the past decades, unable to break the curse.**

_ You just answered your own question. _

**Oh please! Pops and mom should’ve gotten over it by now. I say we ditch this lord and go see the king and queen.**

_ What if they think we’re dead? They never sent any letter. Just books, clothes and food. And they certainly never answered any we sent. _

**Then they’re in for a big surprise!**

Wade ruffles his hair with a frustrated grunt. Why did his life become so complicated? It was so simple at the ruins. So domestic and— boring.

**Until Spidey showed up.**

He never regretted the decision to come with Peter. More than that, he thought— hoped that— that— 

_ What? Something good would come out of it? You knew deep down that this— infatuation you had with him was doomed from the start. _

He knew. He  _ knew.  _ But he can’t stop thinking about him, even now when he should think about the duty he has towards his people. He’s the Crown Prince. Once he breaks the curse, he can return to his home and take the reigns of the kingdom from his father. This is what he has been prepared for ever since he could walk and string two words in a sentence. Even alone in that tower, his mother took care to send him books on proper etiquette, history, kingdom’s affairs both past and present, war accounts, commerce, then there were maps of the known world, clothes, food. His mother took care to keep him up to date and cultured.

But he never received a letter, even though he kept sending them until he ran out of paper and ink.

A familiar laugh pulls his attention away from the nasty memories. In two strides he’s at the window facing towards the inner courtyard. There, amidst peasants and merchants, her hair a resplendent blond color, not unlike that of a wheat field at the peak of a summer day, Gwen makes her way through the crowd, her nose scrunching up as she talks animatedly to— Harry. He can’t see MJ, though.

**Or Peter.**

_ Oh, so now we’re back to being enamored of Spidey? Didn’t you have a thing for MJ? _

**You mean the same thing you have for Gwen?**

_ Hey! That woman has every ounce of my respect! _

**And then some.**

_ Gross! Go wash that mouth of yours. _

He lifts his hand to wave and draws in a deep breath to shout their names, but just then a company of not less than four men burst into his room, all carrying some kind of cloth in different shapes, colors and texture.

“Pardon the intrusion, Your Royal Majesty,” the head of the troupe says with a brisk bow, his long, pointy nose distracting Wade like nothing else. 

**Do you think he’s gonna shout profanities if we poke it?**

“I am his Grace and Utmost Honorable Lord Ajax’s personal tailor,” the man continues, his voice a bit wheezy over the ‘s’. “We are here to personally see to your wedding garments so that by sundown you shall be married to our lord.”

**And savior. He looked like he was about to say that.**

_ Are we marrying into a cult? Is this our life now? _

**Looks like it. We should’ve bowed to this lord instead of pissing him off.**

He doesn’t get to say a word in edgewise because this tailor’s minions already start pawing at him, relieving him of his katanas and clothes before he can even begin to protest. From then on it’s a whirlwind of cloth being presented, discarded, enveloped around his arm or throat, notes taken down, barked orders.

Wade’s nursing a headache by the time most minions have scrambled out of the room and the tailor is in deep conversation with what looks to be his right hand, completely ignoring Wade. Perfect.

He disappears into another room, close by, after he takes his clothes and katanas back. 

**So let’s disappear from the castle.**

_ We… can’t. _

**Uh? Why not? We just need to hop from place to place.**

_ Can’t you feel it? There’s a pressure in the air. _

**Magic?**

_ Could be. Or something else. _

There’s an old clock ticking away on a massive chest on which only a blade of light falls. Seriously, what’s with this lord and his allergy to light. Is every room in the castle completely obscured from natural light?

He misses Peter like he misses a severed limb. The phantom pain pulls at his chest and he has to rub at it and force himself to breathe through it. He doesn’t like  _ any of this.  _ How could he have fooled himself into believing that he would be able to go through with this?

He touches the edge of the chest, leaning into it. He’s been here for at least a handful of hours already and he can only think about a way to escape.

“I see you also have a few tricks up your sleeve.”

Firey blues watch him from the shadow before Ajax steps out once again.

“That’s so creepy,” Wade says, his voice high-pitched and almost hysterical. “Will you keep popping up out of nowhere after we’re married, too?” 

“Depends. Will you try to escape after tonight, too?”

Wade snorts. “It’s you who will want to escape after tonight.”

A frown etches itself into Ajax’ otherwise smooth skin. “After tonight you will belong to me. And tomorrow morning we will go visit your parents. With your curse broken, they will have no choice but to cede the throne.”

Wade cackles, and it’s hysterical. Does he even know the catch to his curse?

**I think we’re going mad.**

_ Where’s Spidey when we need him? _

“To who?” Wade asks because this whole charade has lost any trace of logic or common sense. “Me or you?”

A sharp half-smile pulls the corner of his lips up. “Your wedding clothes will be ready in an hour.”

“Wow, you really like to work your minions to death, don’t you?”

At this, the lord approaches him lightning-fast, his palm searing hot on Wade’s forearm. He looks down at it, confused at the extreme heat.

“I suggest,” he says, a slithery quality to his voice, not unlike that of a reptile, “that you behave yourself, if you wish to see your parents for the last time.”

Wade glances up at the intense, almost reptilian features of the lord, then down at the hand that feels like it’s trying to brand him.

“Is that how your vow will begin? With a threat wrapped up in a smile?”

Ajax chuckles. “You might not completely bore me to death with that mouth of yours.”

**Uh… is he trying to flirt with us?**

_ I think he’s gloating for being so mysterious. _

A crackle in the air distracts both of them and Wade’s the first to go and open the windows. Just outside the turrets flanking the gate, a fizzling red and orange ball extends until it takes the shape of a huge monster, its horns framing the infernal snout.

**Shit.**

“Well, that explains the pressure in the air,” he says absent-mindedly as his gaze is searching the grounds for Gwen and Harry.

“Why is that monster back?”

Wade turns a surprised look at the lord now at his side. “Back?”

“It appeared almost a week ago,” Ajax says, his features darkening. “That’s how I got to send the spider to bring you here.”

He frowns, not quite understanding how this is related to Peter rescuing him. But he doesn’t have time to get all the details as the creature marches towards the castle and the panic instills. He hoists himself up on the windowsill, gaze searching for a cart or wagon to slow his fall and catching sight of Harry pulling Gwen away from the chaos instead.

“Then you better get your men ready,” Wade says, finding the perfect spot to land, “because that thing cannot cross into this realm without being summoned.”

He looks to his left only to be met with empty air. The lord already disappeared. Good. Less trouble for Wade.

He jumps.

***

A swarm of Wyverns blot the sky as Rosie releases a scream, swerving right when Balrog’s long, molten tail snaps too close to her left wing.

Peter doesn’t need to look far to see Razor Face, perched atop one of the horns. His heart skips a beat, both in relief and deep sorrow. He’s at it again. Peter thought he gave up meddling in blood magic after the last failed attempt.

“What’s  _ that  _ thing?” screeches Peter B.. Miles is currently seated between Peter and Peter B. on Rosie’s back.

“It’s badass, that’s what it is!” Miles shouts and Peter basically feels him vibrating with excitement.

“What’s the plan, Peter?” Peter B. calls when Rosie inclines to one side as she comes into a half circle close to the highest turrets.

Peter gets a glimpse of the inner courtyard where the guards are amassing towards the southern part of the castle and people are running for cover.

“You two stay close by the castle with Rosie and try to fend off the Wyverns. I’ll take Balrog in a bit.”

“What?” Peter B says at the same time as Miles goes, “not fair!”

But he’s leaning in, as close to Rosie’s hearing as he can get.

“Hey, girl,” Peter calls out, “think you can get us back close to the castle?”

She crows and starts beating her wings, bringing them up, up, up until Peter feels like the air is missing, making him slightly dizzy. 

Then she falls, and Peter can only hear Miles’ excited cheering, as the ground comes up so fast he’s positive they’ll crash through it, but she flares her wings at the last moment and they float among the Wyverns who are circling around the castle. She breathes fire on any Wyvern that comes into her sight, her ragged scream overpowering the Wyverns’.

Balrog is still trying to get his bearings or something along those lines because it doesn’t attack. For now. 

“Miles! What— what are you doing?”

Peter makes it in time to turn his head around and see Miles backflipping over Peter B. a hand planted on his friend’s shoulder, before his body disappears into thin air.

“Thought I’d use my trick where Rosie can’t see me!” Miles shouts from farther down Rosie’s back, before small lightning veins appear and then they jump off onto the closest Wyvern’s back.

That’s when a bigger amount of lightning flares to life and the Wyvern screams before it plummets down. For a moment, Peter’s heart is in his throat, fearing Miles fell with the creature, but another Wyvern shoots off along their side, as if trying to get rid of something and Miles’ excited cheering pierces his ears before another bout of lightning hits the Wyvern.

“Stick to the plan,” Peter says, pushing himself to a crouch on Rosie’s back, right where the wings join her spine. 

“What? Wait! Where—”

“And watch each other’s backs!” Peter shouts as Rosie inclines herself towards her left and Peter lets himself fall before he shoots a line and circles the roof of a turret once, sticking to its side.

“Who’s gonna watch  _ your  _ back?” Peter B. shouts, but Rosie’s already lifting them up so Peter doesn’t answer.

He’s learned, in the short span of time that they’ve been acquainted, that Peter B. is a worrywart. So even if Peter didn’t tell him to watch after Miles, he’d have done that anyway. 

Now, for other important matters: his gaze finds Gwen and Harry huddled behind a wagon and using it as a shield against the Wyvern that landed in the courtyard. He jumps off, letting the momentum bring him as close to the Wyvern as he dares to before he shoots another line and kicks the Wyvern in the side, sending it crashing against a few wooden stands. 

He pulls on the web and lands on the edge of the wagon.

“All biped, angry-looking pets are not allowed in, didn’t you read the sign posted outside?” Peter can’t help but quip.

“Peter?”

Stupid.  _ Stupid.  _ Of course she’d recognize him, no matter the clothes he wears or the black hoodie sewn badly and hastily into his vest or the black handkerchief covering his mouth and nose.

“Wrong person, ma’am,” he tries, not daring to turn around. “Good day, ma’am, stay away from the mean Wyverns!” 

“Peter Benjamin Parker,” she growls, actually getting a hold of his pants and pulling, which sees Peter toppling off backwards and into— Harry’s arms. “Do your aunt and uncle know what you’re up to these days?”

“Helping princes escape unhappy marriages with manipulative men who plot to take over the throne? Afraid not.”

That had been the plan when they set out, but along the way a Balrog appeared out of thin air and the Wyverns hadn’t been far behind. Now the plan is more along the lines: deal with the annoying beasts and  _ then  _ rescue Wade.

“So you’re— what? A hero in your spare time?” Harry asks, amused as Peter tries to get himself out of his arms and on the ground.

“That would explain the long disappearances,” Gwen butts in. “What’s with these garments, though? Do you need a proper suit or something? I can—”

He finally manages to stand on his own two feet and rearrange his hoodie. “Lost my mask while fighting Y—”

“Watch out!” Gwen shouts, but it’s too late as the Wyvern’s spiky tail hits Peter square in his chest and sends him off into the gate wall.

When he comes back it’s to a familiar voice calling out to him and he has to blink and dust his face off the powder from the wall he broke into. 

“Baby boy, hey, baby boy you okay?”

The relief and those weird butterflies in his stomach make Peter’s mind swimming through the dizziness faster and he’s greeted by Wade’s handsome (if worried) face, one hand supporting Peter’s head, while the other lies almost still on his chest.

“Yeah,” he says, pushing himself up into a sitting position just as he sees Rosie doing loops in the air and breathing fire on her enemies as around her, Peter B. and Miles do everything they can to decimate the number of beasts. 

All over the walls archers shoot both normal and fire arrows and in the courtyard people have taken shelter wherever they could, so mostly soldiers run around fighting the creatures.

A relieved sigh from Wade pulls his attention back and Peter’s reminded of the reason why he came here.

“Don’t marry,” he blurts out, and Wade’s eyes widen slightly. If he doesn’t say this now, he’ll never be able to say it. “Please. I don’t want you to marry.”

It takes a moment or two for Wade to fully register the words and then a wide smile splits his face. But it’s cut short by a Wyvern heading their way. He’s on his feet before he fully thinks about it, Wade following suit.

“I can—”

But Wade is running towards it and in a few moves he has the creature sliced into three parts. Peter shouldn’t feel as impressed as he is now, considering that they’ve fought ninjas not long ago.

Then his spider sense goes off the charts and dread feels like a ball of lead in his stomach as the only thought he has is  _ protect Wade. _

He springs forward slamming into Wade and covering his body with his own on the ground just as half of Balrog’s horn cuts through the middle of the walls. It skims Peter’s back and he screams, the pain searing hot and maddening.

That’s when his metal legs sprout, the bones in his face shifting and separating in places to allow for a wider jaw and two more pairs of eyes, pushing the handkerchief down around his neck.

He both recognizes Wade and at the same time he doesn’t.

Balrog’s piercing cry out pulls his spider’s attention away and he remembers why the smoke in him filled his crevices once again. He jumps back and then up the half crumbled wall until he reaches the highest point on the wall, which is around Balrog’s mouth.

Two pits of fire and darkness look at him and he can’t help but grin.

Then his gaze finds a small creature perched on Balrog’s horn and the grin stretches a bit more.

He jumps on the nearest horn and crawls his way up even as Balrog leans back and lifts its head up, trying to dislodge the spider making its way towards the creature at the top.

He instinctively knows that that’s the key to all of this, but the molten tail catches him and throws him back through the wall he crawled up on. Rubble and hay cover him as he coughs blood and his metal legs lift him back up.

But just as he gets his bearings again, his eyes fall on Wade ** _prey _ ** and something uglier than the smoke douses his sense clean as he lunges, crawling faster than he can think until he has the Wyvern’s ridged head between his own two hands and with a chittering cry he rips the head off in one smooth motion.

He lets the creature’s body fall down as he crawls towards Wade ** _prey _ ** and gathers him to his chest, not even registering the shocked expression on the prince’s face as he pulls them both to the side— to Gwen and Harry’s side.

_ “Take care— him,”  _ he forces his vocal chords to produce a semblance of words that his friends can understand.

They both stare in frozen shock at Peter, but Peter’s too busy warring with the madness inside of him to care right now about what the revelation of what Peter really is does to his friends.

Besides — he turns towards Balrog currently in the process of lifting itself on its hind legs to trample the rest of the wall — Peter has bigger fish to fry right now.

He looks for the familiar red dragon with her wings bleeding into black and Peter finds her battling Wyverns. He crawls up on the wall and times her loops until she swoops in and Peter jumps on her back. She’s too busy breathing fire and using her claws to deal damage to the Wyverns to realize that the one on her back is not exactly the Peter she knows.

Then Peter B. swings back and almost falls off Rosie.

_ “It’s okay,”  _ he says, trying to reassure him by keeping his hands up in a placating way.

“Wha—what—”

_ “Long story,”  _ Peter replies, getting the hang of his new mouth.  _ “Need you to steer Rosie towards Balrog.” _

He understands almost immediately why Peter asks him that, considering that he doesn’t sound like  _ Peter  _ and he looks even weirder, so he jogs towards her neck and relies the information, before he swings off to, presumably, help Miles. 

The moment Rosie is anywhere near Balrog, Peter jumps off again, right on top of Razor Face, both tumbling down Balrog’s spine. Balrog screeches and falls back on its front legs, the shudder of the impact felt by the both of them. 

_ “Put it back where it came from or so help me!”  _

“Never!”

Peter grins, and it must be a horrific view because Razor Face steps back, his dark green skin becoming a shade or two lighter. His metal leg is ready at Peter’s side, prepared to deal the blow that would solve at least one of their issues. 

But just at that moment another blood-curdling screech ushers from Balrog’s maw and it jolts back, which dislodges them. Without thinking, he straightens his limbs along his body to reach Razor Face in time to gather him against Peter’s chest, pushing himself into a ball as they impact the grassy ground.

Peter has his breath knocked out of himself and as they roll down further from the creature, he manages to lose Razor Face from within his arms.

He plants his metal legs and stops his tumbling, before he tears it off after Razor Face because the little foul mouth has no intention of seeing reason or think things through.

The goblin might be knee high, but  _ damn _ if he doesn’t run fast. Peter doesn’t catch him before he crawls up the beast’s hind leg, so he follows suit only to see Razor Face throw himself at Wade’s back with his trusted rusty knife.

Peter shoots a line, sticking to Razor Face’s back, and pulls. Wade plunges one sword right in the middle of Balrog’s head, and it cries out, the shudder of it traveling down his body as it lifts its head and Peter sees that half of his left horn is cut clean.

Razor Face tries to free himself of the webs, spouting his usual curses and insults. Yet Peter has to take his eyes off of the little creature because Balrog’s molten tail comes from the side and he makes it in time to shoot another line and pull Wade flat on his back, as well as himself.

The air almost sizzles above Peter’s body as the hot tail whips back out of their range.

The anger pushes at his seams, burning at his own self control and there’s only a clamoring  ** _yesyesyesgiveinyesgivein _ ** in his head as he lifts himself up and Razor Face leaps in the air with a furious cry, rusty knife ready to plunge into Peter’s heart, but he makes it in time to push himself to the side.

Still, Razor Face is nowhere near done, but Peter sees a pissed off Wade running, both katanas held at his sides and he counters both of them with one metal leg before they slice through Razor Face. Peter’s own body is contorted in a way that has at least two metal legs digging into his side, keeping with a bit of effort against the sheer strength that Wade packs behind his swords.

“What.” The anger dissipates from Wade’s face, confusion replacing it. “Why are you—”

_ “He can’t help it,”  _ Peter says, staring intensely at the prince.  _ “He can’t  _ help it,  _ Wade!” _

His eyes widen, though the scrutiny remains and he reluctantly steps back, but Razor Face obviously has other plans because when has Peter Parker’s life ever been easy? 

He manages to cut Peter across his cheek as he rolls out from underneath Peter.

“That’s it, you motherfucker!” Wade roars. “You die tonight!”

But before anybody has time to react the tail envelops around Wade’s middle, searing through his clothes and skin, pulling a pained grunt from him, and Peter webs a part of the tail to halt it for a few seconds before his webs burn and Wade is thrown off which gives Wade the necessary time to cut through it. Peter lunges and shoots another line as Wade freefalls, and then he pulls him in.

Wade’s breathing erratically, trying to put up a front, but his stomach is almost melted through.

_ “Wade,”  _ his voice breaks in the middle, panic gripping his insides like a fish net.

“It’s okay,” Wade says, “it’s okay, I’m okay, baby boy. Time. Give it time. I’m okay.”

Peter almost cries at the way Wade’s hands catches Peter’s as it hovers over the wound already healing, the way his voice sounds so frantic and reassuring. It’s pure relief that courses through his veins at the sight of the skin stitching itself back, not blood. With a short sigh, Wade pushes himself up and that’s when Peter remembers.

He has an ace up his sleeve. Almost literally.

_ “Wade,”  _ he gets up, close enough to Wade that his shoulder brushes Peter’s chest,  _ “I know how to deal with this.” _

Wade searches his face and Peter has an inkling that he’s trying to figure out if Peter’s plans doesn’t imply that he somehow gets himself hurt.

“What do you need me to do?”

Just then Rosie swoops in with an angry cry out before she breathes fire upon the Wyvern whose claws plunged into her right wing. Miles and Peter B. are busy with the swarm that follows Rosie. Apparently they can also work like a beehive.

_ “Go!”  _ Peter growls, feeling the fury at having a friend be cornered like that.

Wade’s wide eyes turn on him, and he’s warring with himself. Between jumping to help his friend and staying here to help Peter.

_ “GO!”  _ he repeats, louder and more forceful, pushing Wade away just as a Wyvern’s legs skim the back of Balrog.

Wade grabs a leg out of reflex, to the Wyvern’s discontent, looking at Peter with a mix of apprehension and worry until Peter cannot see him anymore.

His gaze comes back to Razor Face, who took his place at the top of Balrog’s horn. He fishes out the card the wizard gave Peter, only now realizing that he was never told how to activate it. He turns it back and forth but apart from the drawing of the King on the front, there’s nothing— 

There’s an open door at the bottom of the drawing though, so Peter does the next best thing he can think of and slaps the card face down on top of Balrog’s back.

For a moment, nothing happens, but then Peter finds himself freefalling, clutching the card to his chest. He doesn’t make it in time to cull his landing, and he groans as he sprains his left wrist.

“NOOO!” he hears the angry cry not far from him as he gathers himself up and winces, not being accustomed to feeling his sprain heal. He’s never healed this fast before. “What did you  _ do! You incompetent pest! You vermin!” _

Peter snarls at the angry goblin face, letting himself snap for a moment or five, feeling the smoke pushing at his seams, clouding his spider vision. Razor Face backtracks two steps, but the ire doesn’t diminish. Peter cradles his hand, the card crushed in his fist, keeping himself upright with the help of his metal legs.

_ “How many more innocent people will die at the hand of your arrogance?”  _ Peter growls, his jaw clenching and unclenching, the bones more flexible than the ones he has as a human.

“You always mess my plans!” Razor Face accuses. “You always get in the way, you foolish arachnid!”

_ “It’s for your own good!”  _ Peter shouts, his voice delivering the words in that raspy quality that makes him sound harsh and angry.

“What does that even  _ mean?”  _ Razor Face shouts back. “Who are you to decide what’s good for me?”

_ “You could’ve died! Summoning that behemoth—” _

“My life doesn’t concern you!”

_ “It does!” _

They’re both breathing hard by now and Peter’s skin is still thrumming with vicious energy that he doesn’t seem to be able to expel. Like a cornered animal, it seeks a way out where there is none.

Then Razor Face lifts two fingers to his mouth and whistles two times. A cry emits from somewhere above them, but Peter stubbornly keeps his eyes on Razor Face the same way the goblin does, both staring each other down. Then he lifts a hand and one of the Wyvern’s claws takes hold of it and lifts him into the air.

Peter snarls again and then he crawls at an inhuman speed towards the castle, jumping and shooting a web before crawling up the wall and then on top of it until he reaches the highest point. He absentmindedly stuffs the card in his pants pocket, the anger clouding his judgement.

But another shrill sound has Peter look for the source before the entire swarm of Wyverns stop attacking Rosie and the others and fly off towards the setting sun.

Rosie releases a triumphant cry out complete with fire and he can hear the cheering both around the courtyard and up in the air where Miles, Peter B. and Wade are safely sitting on Rosie’s back, Wade hugging her neck.

It takes Peter a long moment to realise that the fight is over. It settles softly around his shoulders only to melt into his body and he has to grip the flagpole and grit his teeth against the uncomfortable feeling of metal legs slowly dissolving into his own spine. 

People are still congratulating and talking over each other as both guards and peasants hug one another. Then Rosie lands in the middle of the square and instead of people running for the hills they laugh and cheer as if Rosie has always protected them.

He slowly pulls up the handkerchief that has been hanging on his neck ever since he talked with Gwen and Harry, and pulls up his hoodie.

He should join them. He really should.

But— something keeps him rooted where he’s hanging on the side of the pole.

There’s no opening for him, no lull in the chatter or anything else that might offer him an opportunity to slip in and add himself to the group. He’s— just here. Above. Overlooking the entire square. He glances up in the direction the Wyverns and Razor Face went off, not seeing anything else ominous approaching.

The sun’s almost halfway melted into the mountain range.

_ Wade. _

That’s what pushes him off the roof into a mid-air loop before he lands in front of Rosie. She crows twice and leans down to push her snout into Peter’s front. He’s unable not to stroke her scaly skin, smiling behind the handkerchief. But he pushes her gently away as his eyes search for Wade.

He goes into the cheerful crowd and takes a blacksmith’s gloves, to his surprised ‘hey!’, and then runs out of the crowd just as Wade sees him.

A huge grin splits his face, like Peter’s the best thing he could have laid his eyes on. But Peter’s feeling the panic rising in his throat, almost making him choke on his own breath. 

“Hey, Pe- Spidey—” he cuts himself off when Peter hastily pushes the blacksmith gloves on Wade’s hands and then relieves himself of his vest, putting it on Wade and dragging the hoodie so low it almost reaches Wade’s nose.

That’s how Wade’s transformation catches them, with Peter breathing hard, black handkerchief masking half of his face, his hands fisted into the hem of the hoodie keeping it as low as possible, which has Wade bend forward, his hands warming Peter’s elbows.

Wade’s eyes widen when he realizes what Peter’s done, and Peter cannot for the life of him take his eyes off of Wade. His mind is a beehive of  _ protectprotectprotect  _ and he wishes he could make them disappear to a secluded place.

But they’re surrounded by people, all of them talking and laughing and cheering.

“Hey, Peter, what—” Miles trails off behind him as silence falls on the square.

It’s so sudden that Peter’s ears whistle. He hasn’t let Wade go and Wade doesn’t look like he will either.

Then Lord Ajax starts talking, spouting congratulations and exalting his own strategic plan at getting rid of the monster and the Wyverns. Some people cheer, but most are murmuring among themselves. During the entire battle, nobody even saw the lord. Not even the guards who, you might think, would be the ones to receive commands from their leader.

The murmurs grow to a displeased clamor, many women shouting profanities at Lord Ajax, calling him a coward and a weasel. Peter doesn’t feel like turning around to see what the lord looks like faced with his displeased subjects.

“Peter,” Wade says quietly, his hold tightening and pulling Peter in a bit.

He feels the need to say something now. Wade’s expression looks like it’s pleading with Peter to do that. But of course Lord Ajax still has more to say to his people.

“Did you know,” he thunders just so he can be heard over the discontent, “my loyal subjects, that this,” there’s a pause in which Peter believes that he is pointing towards him, “is none other than Peter of the Parker hut.”

“It’s a cottage for Merlin’s sake!” Peter can’t help but chime in loud enough to be heard because he’s had enough with people and calling his cottage a hut. He’s not an ogre or evil faery.

This is when he turns around, but he keeps himself in front of Wade to obscure as much of him as possible.

Silence descends once again over the square as every eye turns to him.

“Oh, Peter?” A guard from atop the south wall says, his voice echoing off in the courtyard. “The scrawny boy who fixed my shoulder plate? It was making an infernal noise. He fixed it in a few hours.” 

“He fixed my belt and made the armor fit me!” says another from the west wall. 

“He helped with my helmet.” Behind Peter now. The guard turns to the one next to him. “Didn’t cool off my head. Now I get a breeze every time I move.” And his friend nods as if he knows exactly what the first guard is feeling. 

And so on, people going on and on about how much Peter helps them. Wade sneaks his gloved palm over Peter’s forearm before it clasps over Peter’s hand. He squeezes back even as he glares at the lord whose attention goes from guard to guard as a lot of them call out some deed Peter performed for them.

Then Gwen sidles up to Peter’s side, cups her hands around her mouth and shouts,  _ “let’s hear it for Spider-Man!” _

The crowd cheers at unison and Peter actually steps back, not used to this much attention and noise. He’s momentarily distracted, though, by Wade’s front molding against his back, almost embracing him. Wade’s warm puffs of breath gently ruffle the hair above his ear.

“My Spidey,” he murmurs, proudness mixing in with the fondness.

It doesn’t take long for the crowd to chant ‘Ajax down’ and they almost maul him off the side of the wagon on which he climbed. The guards intervene, but only to keep things from degenerating. It’s when the captain of the guards steps forward, handcuffs at the ready that a shadow crosses Ajax’s face and Peter’s whole body tenses at once, even though his spider sense doesn’t go off.

Wade’s arms link on Peter’s stomach, tightening in reassurance. “He won’t harm anybody,” he murmurs into Peter’s ear. 

But Wade can’t be sure. He doesn’t know Ajax.  _ Peter  _ doesn’t know Ajax. He could be hiding something that would harm anybody in his vicinity.

Then Ajax fishes out a red ball with yellow and orange frills on one side. Before the captain has time to react Ajax throws the ball to the ground, making it explode in a cloud of white smoke and sparks.

When the smoke dissipates, Ajax is nowhere to be found.

Everybody is perplexed and the hush is so complete that the huff of laughter coming from Wade sounds like it echoes.

“Told ya.”

Guards light up the torches strewn across every wall and at every entrance, and soon the whole square is awashed in a soft, warm glow. Though the happy faces of the people around him sometimes look grotesque combined with the play of shadow and light when they move their heads just— wrong.

Wade hasn’t let him go, even though most of the attention has returned on Peter. Right. Now what?

Murmurs start anew, but this time people are asking themselves who will be the new lord of the castle. The region needs protection, but more than that, the new lord needs to present himself at the royal court and receive the king’s approval. So they can’t choose just anybody. This person needs to be of noble lineage.

“It should be Peter,” a woman’s voice shouts from somewhere to the left. Peter can’t see her, but he doesn’t even try to find her.

What she’s proposing is so preposterous, Peter’s not sure he could even untie his tongue and deny that.

“But he isn’t—” a man calls out this time.

“He saved us!” the same woman protests. “What if he’s not a royal blood? He’s our hero. Better than the sniveling coward that turned tail.” More than half the courtyard shout their affirmation at that.

“And his company helped! They’re all heroes” a guard from atop shouts and people cheer once.

Peter’s distracted momentarily when he sees a gaggle of kids gather around Rosie and looking up at her with twinkling eyes. Rosie, obligingly, lets her head down so they can touch her. The sheer joy on their young faces pulls a smile from Peter and Wade tightens his hold some more, probably seeing the same thing.

“His mother was the granddaughter of a duchess, if I remember well,” a man says and pulls Peter’s attention back to the matter at hand.

“But his father was a  _ pirate,”  _ an old woman's voice rings out this time. “Don’t think our king would ignore that.”

“He was a pirate,” another man comes out, “but his good deeds gathered the respect and sigil of many noble families across the kingdom.”

“What? What’s that, Jeorg?” the first man demands.

“It’s true! Didn’t you hear? About the watermill in Four Mills village? The contraption that helped the Keep of the Dragons win the battle against the Southerners?”

“Ya uncultured swine,” a scratchy old women’s voice calls out, her whole body trembling and relying heavily on her cane. “Tha’ ain’t ‘im. Tha’ was ‘er. The mother. She was the brains.”

“All the more reason why he’s the perfect candidate,” the first woman who spoke calls out again.

Why are they discussing his lineage? No. Scratch that. Why do they know more about his parents than Peter? The gossip in this region is astounding! But he can’t let them decide this.

“I propose,” Peter says, voice raising to be heard over the clamor of voices bickering about who did what. They quiet at once, attention on Peter. “Harry Osborn as the new lord of these lands.”

“What?” Harry splutters, eyes going round and looking at Peter as if he just betrayed his trust.

Wade huffs a low chuckle in his ear and it takes every bit of control Peter has to keep himself focused. The fact that he has a prince plastered to his back, exuding warmth and keeping the early night chill at bay, is not helping either.

“Now that I think ‘bout it, he does have a father—”

“Hey, Peter, what’s wrong with Wade?” Miles asks while Harry’s swept in the middle of people dredging up his lineage and weighing the pros and cons of it and how Harry’s lived his life so far.

Peter doesn’t envy him one bit. It’s like having your dirty laundry being aired in public out of nowhere. But Miles is coming closer and even Gwen who is right at his side peers at Wade whose head is bent on Peter’s opposite shoulder.

“Uh, noth—”

“Is he wounded?” asks Gwen, a concerned frown on her face.

“No. Nothing like that.” Think Parker.  _ Think!  _ “He just— he’s not feeling well.”

“Did the Wyverns—”

“No!” he says exasperated because Miles seems to have a knack at escalating things. “He just needs to lie down.” Yes! Perfect escape plan! “On that note I’ll help him to a chamber in the castle.”

Gwen frowns, looking as if she’s going to argue with that, but then she nods and Miles waves them off, and Peter doesn’t look a gift horse in the mouth as he makes his way towards the entrance to the castle. It’s an awkward walk what with Wade half draped over him, but he makes do and people don’t stop them or peer down under the hoodie because Peter gave them another fish to fry. He half feels sorry for pushing Harry into the lions’ den, half feels relieved that he thought on two feet.

He’d like to say that as soon as the door closes behind them, Wade lets him go, but it doesn’t happen. If anything, Wade tightens his hold on Peter and at this point Peter’s lungs are protesting.

“Wade,” he whispers, feeling as if anything louder than that will have the silent walls cave in on them, “I’ll have to go back. I thrust Harry into that crowd. Need—”

“He has Gwen.”

Peter frowns. “Yeah, but Gwen’s not… MJ— what are you implying?”

A soft sigh, and Wade disentangles himself from hugging Peter and goes to the window, pushing it open a palm and motioning for Peter to come. He feels like a puppet whose strings were cut as he picks his way in the dimly lit room, his skin tingling where Wade’s been touching him. Once at his side, he peers down in the square, and his eyes climb on his forehead. He watches with raising surprise and something akin to awe as she plays the crowd, spinning facts and fiction alike to paint a favorable picture of Harry and MJ. They seemed to have had something against MJ, and Gwen’s having none of that as she reminds them of how brilliant and just a woman MJ is. 

And then he sees the way Harry looks at her, as if there is no crowd around them, as if Gwen is the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.

Peter steps back and glances at a smirking Wade. “Is Harry—?” He can’t even finish that sentence as dread pours down his spine.

Wade must have seen that on his face because the smirk melts into something serious. He shakes his head.

“No. He very much still loves MJ.”

“But—”

“Love knows no boundaries, baby boy,” he says, fondness in his eyes, “no numbers, no age, no gender, no,” and here his voice softens, “physical appearance.”

But Peter steps forward, wanting to make sure that what he saw was real and not something he came up with.

“I mean,” he starts, hands on the windowsill, body slightly bent forward, “I always knew that MJ and Harry would become an item ever since they first met, but— I mean. I wished Gwen would find someone who would  _ see  _ her for who she is. Who would love her quirkiness, her barbed words, her smiles. Everything. Because she deserves that. Stars know, she put up with a lot of my shit.” He laughs softly.

Wade latches the window and then covers Peter’s hand. Peter looks up at him, as if startled from a reverie. He swallows, knowing that look because he feels it on his own face.

“I— I should go.” If his feet would move, that is.

Wade tightens his hold on his hand, then brings it up to softly kiss his knuckles. Peter is not sure if the frantic beating of his heart is due to that gesture or the way Wade’s scarred face is half cast into shadow, half into the warm glow of the candles lying around atop the furniture. Or a combination of both.

But he can’t deny that the way Wade looks at him right now has his skin break into goosebumps, his mouth go dry, and his stomach aflutter. 

He squeezes Wade’s hand, unsure if it’s in reassurance or something else, and then he pulls and it’s his turn to kiss Wade’s scarred knuckles. His lips linger there, entirely on their own accord. There’s the smell of leather, sweat, and dust. An unappealing smell, but it’s one Peter tries to memorize.

“I can’t stay,” he whispers into his knuckles, not daring to open his eyes and look at Wade.

He wrenches himself from the prince’s hold and strides towards the door.

“I have to go, Wade,” Peter says, as if Wade pleaded with him to do the opposite. The door is closing in. “I can’t very well stay. You know better than I do.” Two more steps and he’s out. “You’re— you’re a prince and I’m—”

Wade’s grip is stronger this time, almost searing itself like a brand around Peter’s wrist, and Peter whirls around only to feel Wade’s palm cupping his cheek and see the hoodless head bending down.

“You’re perfect,” Wade finishes for him, nose pushed alongside Peter’s, their breath mingling. 

A tremor wrecks Peter’s body, hot and cold waves washing his senses clean and stocking a maddening buzz under his skin. 

“You’re mine,” he whispers before his lips seal over Peter’s.

He can’t even gasp properly because it zings across his body, whatever the zing is. It makes Peter grab the lapels of his vest and drag Wade closer, which he complies all too readily, pushing Peter into the nearest wall.

They kiss like there is no tomorrow for them. Because there isn’t.

Peter knows that with the certainty of his beating heart. Wade will leave for the palace come morning and he’ll take on the king’s duty to lead this kingdom and protect it from the threats at its borders. He will marry a noble woman or man and live happily ever after.

It’s a simple story, isn’t? The prince gets the happy ending that he deserves.

And Peter— well, Peter gets to continue living his life in his cottage, adjusting and improving the devices his mother left behind and making new ones of his own. When Harry becomes the lord of this land, Peter hopes he won’t hold a grudge and employ Peter so that he can have access to more material and improve the life at the castle and in the surrounding villages.

And that’s the end of the story for Peter, too, isn’t it?

They break the kiss only because they’re still human and need the air. Wade laughs like only a man drunk on love can, and Peter smiles as only a man about to do something detestable and hating himself for it can.

He pushes himself up on his tiptoes a bit to press another, last kiss.

“I love you, Wade,” he says them easily, they tumble from his lips like they were meant to. He hates himself for the light in Wade’s blue eyes, the happiness unfolding like a flower in mid-winter, trembling, but  _ oh so hopeful. _ “But this is goodbye.”

Wade’s fast to cup his face. “No,” he shakes his head, “I’m not letting you go. I won’t—”

“I am,” Peter says softly, covering one of Wade’s hands and pressing a kiss to the meaty, scarred bit at the base of his thumb. “I am,” he repeats, and then pushes Wade’s hand away and slips out of the chamber without a backwards glance.

*** 

Come morning, Wade does leave, but Peter’s not there to see him. He’s been travelling back and forth between his cottage, the village and the castle, helping with restoring the castle as best as he could. None of the devices he had were any good, so he made use of his spider strength and webs.

MJ and many other villagers joined them, the women bringing food and drinks and helping however they could.

On more than one occasion Peter worked shoulder to shoulder with Harry, the new lord of the land. He will have to make a trip to the palace, but he decided that first he’ll make sure everything is in order both as far as restorations went and any other affairs left behind by Ajax.

They didn’t exchange a word more than coordinating the boulders. Everybody worked all night and they still didn’t manage to finish. Some bits of the wall were simply too heavy for even ten men to move, leave alone for Peter. He had the strength of those ten men, but fatigue was making him sluggish and unable to concentrate for long periods of time. Miles and Peter B. weren’t faring better. The battle was taking its toll on them all.

It’s late morning when they receive an unusual visitor.

The white horse with golden reins gallops straight into the now rubble-free square, coming to a halt in the middle and making the chickens cluck indignantly at the snorting horse.

A short man in royal garbs climbs off the horse, helped by the two guards he came with.

“I have come to talk to Prince Wade of the Wilson lineage,” he announces with all the pomp only someone who lived at the palace his entire life can muster.

Peter dusts off his hands and approaches him. “You just missed him by half a day.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“He went back to his home,” Miles adds from atop of the wall.

The page — because now that Peter takes him in, he can’t have any other function — looks at each one of them as if they’re struck by a collective madness.

“But the gnomes told me—”

“The gnomes?” Peter says, playing the dumb part just in case. They’re extinct, remember?

“Yes,” the page says impatiently.

“Weren’t they extinct?” wonders Peter aloud, side-glancing Peter B. and Miles as they come by his side.

“I suppose they were, but not anymore?” Even the page is not sure of his own words

Peter B. steps forward. “My friend, maybe you’ve had one too many chalices?”

“Beg your pardon!” Okay, maybe that deflective strategy was a tad too much. “I certainly do not drink on the job!”

“Of course not,” Peter B. replies smoothly. “But you’ve traveled the Enchanted Woods, didn’t you? You might have—”

“I am well aware of the nature of those woods,” the page says affronted, then points to a feather and a small bottle that’s hanging on his chest. “That is why I never go there without protection. They’re just simple woods with this on.”

Peter exchanges a surprised glance with Peter B. Now what? They’re both saying. But the page takes that decision out of their hands. 

“A family of no less than fifty-six gnomes took residence at the Swallowtail ruins. They told me the previous tenant was heading here.”

“Wow,” Miles says. “They don’t waste time working their way off that endangered species list.”

“They sure don’t,” Peter B. murmurs.

“The prince is not here,” Peter repeats, his voice hardening. “He went back to the palace so you better scurry off back there, if you intend to catch him.”

With that he turns around, leaving the royal page to do what he will with that information. He’s out of patience, not to mention the restless buzz under his skin and the hollow black hole in his chest are unbearable now that he’s seen royal garb. He managed to put Wade out of his mind. Why must he be reminded of the prince now that he’s gone?

He’s  _ gone.  _ He should be out of Peter’s mind, too. Nothing will ever be able to make their paths cross. Only if he comes down here for a visit. But even then, Peter will make sure to avoid meeting him.

His mood sours even more as he works with short, angry moves. The others give him a wide berth, and it’s only Gwen grabbing hold of his arm and dragging him off to the side that snaps him out of it.

“What’s eating at you?” she demands, crossing her arms.

Peter looks to the side, his tongue feeling like it’s swimming in acid. “Nothing,” he grits out.

“That’s far from the truth. It mustn’t be tiredness that makes you this short-tempered and ill-mannered. Not the whole issue, that is. I almost miss the nervous, awkward energy you bring with yourself.”

“It’s just fatigue, Gwen,” he says morosely, leaning against the wall and sighing deeply.

She pauses, then comes to lean on the wall, too, her shoulder pressed firmly against his.

“Or a prince-shaped hole.”

Peter can’t even muster the energy to be surprised. He huffs a chuckle. “So it got out.”

“Hard not to considering our champion gossipers. It’s like they were born to sniff out secrets and expose them.”

“Amazing that I got to keep mine for so long, then,” Peter quips, feeling his mood improve.

She laughs. “So true. It helps that you don’t live in the village. Well, not anymore.”

They fall silent after that, Peter leeching as much comfort from his best friend as he can, before she heaves a sigh and pushes herself off the wall.

“If you want to talk, you know you can always come to me, right?”

“Yeah,” he says with a fond smile, “I know.”

“Good. Just making sure. MJ and Harry were driving me crazy with how much they were worrying over you.” She looks across the mound of boulders where MJ and Harry coordinate the other people with such a fond smile that Peter is still amazed he didn’t see this development in his closest friends. “But it’s not just them.” She turns her attention back on Peter. “I constantly worry about you.”

Peter presses his lips. “I’m sorry,” he offers, but she shakes her head. “I just need time to sort myself out,” he continues shakily, wondering if he’s ever going to be able to.

She nods, a pensive look on her face before it clears and she heads back to join the others.

It’s late afternoon when they receive another unusual visit, but this one comes with a bit of fanfare.

Well, if fanfare was comprised of a wizard and a company of more than two dozen gnomes. Peter can’t believe that they came all the way out of the Enchanted Woods only to help them restore the castle, even though that’s what the wizard proclaims with all the aplomb of a nobleman. It takes Peter a bit of wheedling to find out that they’re travelling to the palace to picture-shoot — the wizard’s words — a new location for his moving pictures show.

It makes sense, Peter thinks with a sort of detached amusement.

“Have any of y’all seen a red ball with orange and yellow frills?” the wizard asks at a certain point, gnomes already scattered among the villagers. “There were thirty-two when we left the house. Now there are only thirty-one.”

Peter pushes a boulder away with a grunt before he straightens and looks over the wizard who hasn’t moved a finger to help them.

Peter B. elbows him and then he bends to the side, whispering, “wasn’t that the one we saw when the lord disappeared?”

Peter blinks and recalls the scene. “It might be,” he says, then louder, “I think Lord Ajax was in possession of such a ball. He used it to disappear.”

“Blasts and crivens!” the wizard growls. “Who was on guarding duty?” he demands of the gnomes.

They look at each other, then one of the males says, “‘twas Sal, sir.”

“Sal again! That little— he wants to see this business finished! Kaput! Burned down to a crisp! Where’s Sal?”

Again, they exchange glances. “We haven’t seen ‘im since we left, sir.”

“Hiding, is he?” the wizard gripes, folding his arms across his chest, the billowing sleeves covering his golden sash. “See if he receives any pay at the end of the month. That sniveling—”

“He received his pay yesterday, sir,” a young gnome quips.

“And three months in advance,” a female gnome adds with a snort.

“What?!” The wizard’s beard almost faints. “Who sanctioned such a thing?”

“You did, sir,” the one nearest the wizard says, a quill and a bound leather book in his hands. “I recorded your order as soon as you gave it.”

The wizard goes off in several languages that Peter doesn’t even understand, before he returns to himself, the red of his cheeks simmering down and his beard uncurling from the tight curls.

One of the gnomes is assaulted by a round of no less than seven sneezes. It seems to pull the wizard’s attention to somewhere outside the destroyed front wall of the castle.

“Hm, there’s an odd, familiar stink in the air.”

“I know,” the gnome says, his voice nasal, “it’s spring again outside the Woods.” He sniffles, then sneezes again.

“Not that, Martin,” the wizards says impatiently. “I know old magic when I feel it. I could even perform a rift in time and space with how much there is here.”

“Wait,” Peter B. says, stepping forward. “You’re saying you could open a portal and send us —” 

The wizard turns his head to look Peter B. and Miles from head to toe as if this is the first time he sees them.

“Who are you again?”

“The — people,” Miles says, his voice going out in the middle of the sentence. Or maybe Peter’s ears become deaf with certain words. “The ones you promised to — —”

It’s so weird to watch people’s lips move and hear no sound coming out.

“Ah! Right. The Wicked Witch pals.”

Peter B. looks like he bit into a lemon. “We’re not her pals.”

“Hm, so you want to go home.” He ponders that for such a long time that Peter’s sure Peter B. is one second away from throttling the wizard. “Very well. I’ll send you back.”

He claps his hands once, rubbing them together and thunder crackles in their ears even if it’s a cloudless evening.

“Alakazam, shoo-bee-doo-bee-doo, veritum hocus pocus maledictus!” He throws his hands in the air in a very flamboyant fashion and fireworks explode out of nowhere, the air crackles with both the sound and an invisible pressure as if a tap somewhere is trying to pop out.

“Uh,” Peter hears Miles, “isn’t maledictus Latin for —”

“Let’s hope it’s not in this ‘verse,” Peter B. says, his eyes still trained on the wizard.

Peter looks at his friends, then at the wizard, looks again at his friends but more attentively at the ground beneath their feet, the air above their heads, behind their backs, in front of them.

Nothing. 

They’re still very much there and breathing.

“Are you sure you got the right spell?” Peter asks because his friends are still waiting.

The wizard ignores him as he turns to the two gnomes standing a little ways off to the side.

“Did you get it?” he asks them.

“Get what?” asks Peter.

“Got it, boss. The perfect picture for the promotional posters!”

“Genial!” the wizard applauds like an over excited kid. “Get it to Eli for development,” he orders and the two gnomes nod in unison and then scramble off. He turns to seize Peter B. and Miles up and down. “Now, where were we? Right.” He snaps and Peter’s friends are not there anymore.

The wizard winks as Peter stares in silent shock at the empty air, realizing that no one thought to, y’know, say a proper goodbye to each other. Maybe even hug. After all, they’ve been through so much in such a short time— 

Peter sighs dejectedly and walks back to the castle.


	6. Chapter 6

***

The fresh spring water sluices down his naked torso and arms, taking away the grime and sweat as Peter kneels on the mossy bank of the creek he uncovered months ago. 

He cups his hands together and scoops a bit of water to drink. This is the third hunt he’s been sent on by Lord Harry. Ever since the new lord came to live at the castle along with MJ and Gwen, he decreed that both Ajax Powers and Green Goblin must be brought to justice for what they’ve done to the people of the land. 

And Peter turned out to be a good tracker, and even better at stealth, so he trained a few who seemed to have some unrefined skills in that area and then left to carry out Harry’s orders.

He suspected that his ability to track that well and come close to catching the two he was after has something to do with his new mutation. Maybe darkness sought darkness, or recognized it on such an intrinsic level that Peter thought it was his instinct. It gave Peter an advantage, but it also made him wary to rely too much on that. He hadn’t mastered control over his dark side, over the smoke that came to fill in the nooks and crannies in his head and body, mostly at night, when he was about to fall asleep.

Memories of Wade helped push it back, though. As painful as that path was, he found himself making a habit out of it just to catch a couple of hours of needed sleep. Especially when the days were trying and they were searching blindly for something to give them a direction. 

He was grateful that his men didn’t question him when he pulled them back and had them take another path.

Because Razor Face and Ajax were good at running and covering their tracks well. If Peter hadn’t had this ace up his sleeve he doubted he’d have been able to guide the party so far and wide. Speaking of aces, he buried the King card a few paces off one corner of his house. Hopefully, nobody will ever find it. 

He looks at the silhouette of his reflexion in the running water. It’s been a while since he last cut his hair, so he might do that when he returns to his house. He also needs to make the trip down to the castle and report to Harry, even though his men already did that. But that’s Harry’s way of checking on Peter and making sure he’s okay. They all, MJ and Gwen as well, seem to have agreed on the fact that Peter Parker needs to be looked after.

He’s been living alone in the forest for _ years _and he’s never felt the need to be taken care of. Okay, maybe he made more trips to the village than was necessary. And maybe he didn’t always take care of the wounds he got from fighting goblins and evil faeries. And maybe he almost always relied on what the forest gave him because he was too tired to cook anything.

Okay, fine. He needed to be looked after. 

But not too much.

He was a grown man.

Harry came into power like a man who wanted nothing to do with it. That’s why he had been the best candidate for that role. Not that Peter wanted the power that came with the title. He simply didn’t want to have anything to do with politics and other state affairs. He was not good with that because it meant long waitings, patience, and a way with words he didn’t have.

It takes him a bit of persistence to wet his hair. He hasn’t bathed properly in more than three weeks, being on the move almost constantly. But this time they caught them. Both of them. They were trying to join forces when Peter and his party happened upon them. He uses the soap to lather his dirty locks before he dunks his head and arms into the running water, enjoying the silence that comes with it.

It’s been more than four months since the battle. It took Harry almost a week to put everything in order, after which he left the command in Gwen’s hands while he and MJ went to the palace to meet the king and pledge their fealty to him.

The only thing Harry told Peter when he came back was, “the new king is— something,” with a mix of confusion and amusement, and Peter knew that Wade was doing fine and that he most probably found somebody who helped him break the curse.

He certainly hadn’t heard from or seen Wade ever since that night.

And why should he have? He had been the one to ‘let him go’, hadn’t he? 

A big ol’ show of bravery he put on that night. Bravery he hadn’t felt at all. But Wade needed to be let go, needed to know that there was nothing waiting for him there. Because Peter thought and still thinks that a king shouldn’t tie himself to a low life like him.

Yes, they fought together. Yes, they saved each other’s hides more than once. Yes, Peter was still madly, incomprehensibly in love with that scarred face and that handsome face and the quips and the smiles and the possessive gazes.

But what good does this do to him? He has no claim over Wade’s heart. What they had— what they did, that was just the prince being desperate for someone to touch him and offer the comfort that he’s probably missed on all those decades.

He pulls himself up with a gasp, the thoughts becoming unpalatable, hands pushing the neck-long wavy locks back and wringing the water from them. He keeps his eyes closed, face pushed up into the spotty sunlight that filters between the leaves, as he makes an effort to cram the memories back into the recesses of his mind. It’s always best if he concentrates on the sound of birds and the wind carding through the leaves, the rush of water and his own beating heart, everything that can prove to be a much-needed anchor for a mind that keeps drifting back. 

Back to the past. Back to _ him. _

It doesn’t hurt as much as it did before, during that first month that dragged itself and Peter felt like going out of his skin. Not when he catches himself before he plunges deep into the memory. It’s another story entirely when he’s on the brink of falling asleep and the warmth sails back like a blanket around his shoulders, the feel of scarred lips against his own, the arms branding him wherever they touched, promising to never let him go.

He forgot how his voice sounds like, though. That was the first trait to fade into an echo of an echo of an echo.

Sometimes he tries hard to conjure it, using bits of words and tone of voices from some guards that have a distinct baritone and that remind him of Wade; from laughter in the grand hall where the guards not on duty gather around to talk and enjoy a warm meal, from barked orders. But everything he comes up with is unsatisfying, false, sounds like the kind of thing a desperate man would conjure up to keep the memory of phantom warmth in his cold bones.

He sighs and squeezes his eyes. He’s trying to compartmentalizes, isn’t he?

Peter filled out a bit in the past months. He’s not buff, but not as scrawny as he’s been. He knows that because Margret, the lady who still provides him with milk whether he wants it or not, reminds him of that every time they meet. It must be the constant exercise and the fact that whenever he’s at the castle, which he dubbed his second home, Gwen and MJ take care to keep him on track with the meals. They pamper him, but so is Harry with his newfound love for orange pie and the little croissants filled with chocolate that Gwen makes as snacks between meals.

He’s deep in his thoughts again, light enough that a smile stretches his almost always tight lips, which is why he doesn’t register the change in sounds.

It’s only when the galloping hooves come to a halt that he opens his eyes only to see Wade’s handsome, unscarred face atop a white steed. The horse snorts and backtracks a bit before Wade pulls on the reins and it stops moving with a final snort.

“Caught you,” he says, a smirk on his lips as he dismounts.

There is no reason whatsoever for King Wade to say that to someone like Peter. No reason _ at all. _Yet Peter finds himself gripped by panic as King Wade’s knee-high leather boots submerge into the creek of the same height.

He doesn’t move until Wade is walking out of the creek, and even then he’s not fast enough. Wade catches his wrist, Peter almost splayed on his back, and pulls, even as Peter resists. There are too many things going on at once for Peter to be able to make heads or tails of them. Why is the king here? Why didn’t Peter react faster? What _ even _ is this situation? Why does his voice sounds so— so— _ full _and promising? Why is Peter so stunned, so sluggish, so frozen at the sight of this man, still?

“Let go,” he finds his voice again, “Wade— my king— Your Highness!” he settles on that, trying to get his hand back. 

Wade grins, the face unmarred by a curse almost mocking Peter with the truth it belies. “As your king, I must decline.”

“Wade,” Peter grits out, coming to his senses, and pulling once so hard and sudden that Wade loses his balance and topples over him.

This is not what Peter wanted. He makes An Effort to push Wade away, but he’s realizing quickly that if the man doesn’t want to move, he _ doesn’t move. _ Wade keeps Peter trapped inside his arms, even as Peter’s hands push at Wade’s shoulders, his chest, arms, _ everything, _ but the king’s legs catch Peter’s in a tangle and keep them as still as possible. Peter’s heartbeat is wild, his stomach a knot, his breathing erratic as he struggles and _ struggles _and why did he think that he’s going to ever be free of the longing that’s stocked in the pit of his belly, beneath his chest, at the base of his throat?

But he’s not— he’s not— 

_ “Wade!” _He glares at the king, his vision blurring and Wade widens his eyes and pushes himself away. “Why are you here?” Peter asks as he dusts his pants off, blinks back that blurriness, and then realises that his naked back is dirty, too.

“That hard to believe that I missed you?” It sounds like he has no more energy to argue, like they’ve been at it for hours and Peter doesn’t understand and Wade doesn’t know how else to explain.

But they haven’t. They only just met again. Peter doesn’t turn to put an expression with the softness in Wade’s voice. He doesn’t turn because the voice alone is almost enough to undo Peter completely.

“Yes,” Peter grits out, choosing anger over the rest of the feelings clamoring to the surface. “It’s been more than four months. You— you’re a king now.”

“Does that matter so much?”

“Yes, it does!” Peter puts distance between them, trying to clean his back of the bits of dirt and dead leaves, but he misses spots because he can’t reach them. “You now have a life, and you’re probably even married. What are you doing here?”

Wade lifts both hands in the air, their backs towards Peter, and Peter is turned at such an angle that he can’t help but glance at him. “You see any ring on these fingers? Because I don’t.”

Peter frowns. “You could’ve taken it off.”

That has them both pausing because what Peter implies is something ugly and not at all what he wanted to say. Wade’s calmness disappears, shadows gathering in his eyes.

“You think that if I really found someone— someone _ else,” _his throat clicks over that word, “that could accept me with all the crazy inside my noggin’ I’d have ditched them to make an almost three-day trip to visit another person? You think so lowly of me that you’d have me painted as untrue to my love?”

Peter exhales, frustrated with himself, Wade, the situation they’re in, _ the entire world. _He half turns away, choosing to focus on cleaning his back because he doesn’t know how to answer that.

He can’t. The words burn his throat, scalding his tongue. He can’t. He can’t. He _ can’t. _

He’s not— Wade has a life at the palace. A good one, if he’s the king. He can now look for better prospects to sit at his side, to take care of him when the days are trying and his weary head cannot find solace on the pillow. 

_ Goddammit, _ he doesn’t _ envy _ this faceless person. He’s not— he’s not picturing this hand that’s trying to brush off the earth and foliage from his own back, _ this dirty hand _caressing the king’s head, his neck, his shoulder— 

_ No. _

“You missed a spot.” 

It almost undoes Peter. He locks his knees and grits his teeth even as he feels Wade’s presence at his back, so close, yet not close enough. Goosebumps assault him at the way Wade carefully helps Peter with as little touch as he can do without. It’s both maddening and annoying.

“Done.”

Peter kneels on one knee and scoops water to throw over his shoulder. It’s too little, and he knows, but he stubbornly continues doing that.

Wade sighs. “Let me help.”

“No.”

“You need it.”

“No.”

“I want to.”

“No.”

“I’m your king.”

“N—” he presses his lips together because he can feel Wade’s smugness incinerating his side.

So he lets Wade help him with this, too, carefully submerging his cupped hands and bringing them over the top of Peter’s back, letting the cool water trickle down Peter’s back. It’s a testament to how bad Peter is still having it that he shudders at the thought that instead of the water caressing his back, it’s Wade’s hand and lips and hot breath. 

“Are you going to pull the king card every time something doesn’t satisfy your whims?” he asks because he needs to pull himself from his own head.

“It seems to be working so far, so yes.”

Peter glares at him, but it has no effect because Wade only gazes back with fondness and it almost melts Peter’s glare right off his face. He stares at Wade’s horse, pasturing a little ways off behind a tree on the other side of the creek.

“Why are you here, Wade?” he asks again, not turning to look at him.

Wade shifts and then makes himself comfortable on the ground at Peter’s side, picking up pebbles and throwing them half-heartedly in the creek.

“I wanted to give back your vest.”

Peter looks at him. There’s nothing close to amusement on the king’s face.

“You could’ve given it to Harry or Gwen or MJ.”

A wan smile. “It defeats the purpose. It was the only thing I had left of you, and, as maudlin as it sounds, the only thing that kept me going. I wanted to give it to you personally.”

“It’s been more than four months,” Peter says, ignoring the rest for the sanity of his heart, and stares unseeing into the rushing water. 

Wade hums. “You’re a hard spider to get a hold of. And you raised to be one of the best trackers this kingdom has.”

Peter snorts. It’s something his throat does on its own accord. 

“And a damn good ninja.”

“How do you know all that?”

“I came here almost every week— after the coronation.”

Peter throws him a befuddled look. “How do you have that much free time? This kingdom doesn’t run itself.”

Wade’s head falls back for a hearty laugh. “That, it doesn’t. You’re right. I said every other week. Whenever Rosie came by and I could sneak out of the palace.”

Peter’s forehead touches his forearms. “Can’t believe you’d neglect your duties like that. And for what?”

Wade’s silent. “I didn’t,” he says after a while and Peter peeks at him. His gaze is distant, as if recalling memories. “I actually pulled all-nighters just to have a respite and get out of there when the noble heads patted themselves on the back for jobs well done.”

Peter stares at him, seeing a new side of Wade he hadn’t been familiar with until now. “How come I never knew about these clandestine visits?”

Wade grins like a mischievous boy who did something he shouldn’t have. “I had Harry and his darlings swore an oath to me that they wouldn’t talk about my visits with anybody, least of all you.”

He blinks. “That explains their constipated looks whenever you were mentioned.”

The king actually preens. It pulls a snort and a smile from Peter, even as he’s not sure if he’s more annoyed with his friends for keeping this from him or with Wade for putting them in a tight spot. But it still rubs him the wrong way that they’d choose to honor the word of a king over their friendship. 

Then again, how would he have reacted if they’d told him?

He’d been a mess. Not outwardly, not enough to raise alarm with any of the guards or villagers. But his friends must have sensed that. Must have known that Peter found solace in throwing himself into his work, into the chase. He needed the focus otherwise he would plunge too deep into the dark pit inside him and never come back. And it hadn’t been only because of Wade’s absence.

That would’ve been the main catalyst if he’d have let it fester enough.

And even though his friends didn’t know about the darkness in him, didn’t quite understand the spider when he did transform, they almost naively trusted Peter. 

It was all the more reason to spend time away from them— and his feelings.

The problem had been that the feelings came with him.

It takes a long time for Peter to pull himself from the companionable silence they settled into and push himself to his feet.

He extends a hand and Wade lifts his eyebrows for a moment before he accepts and is pulled easily to his feet. But Peter keeps his hand extended between them even after Wade reluctantly lets go. 

Wade frowns.

“My vest,” Peter says, watching Wade’s face closely, “you said you came to give it back.”

Wade searches Peter’s face and it takes everything in his body not to give away anything he feels right now. Not the sadness or the longing or the nights spent berating himself for letting Wade go. Nothing. He can do a poker face if it’s necessary. This is it.

“It’s on my horse,” Wade says slowly.

Peter looks expectant, so Wade whistles once, short, and the horse comes galloping leisurely until he’s by Wade’s side. He takes a hold of the reins and pats the snout. Peter waits, but the king doesn’t make any move to go look inside the pouches on either side.

“You never showed me your house,” Wade says softly, almost as he’s talking to the horse and not Peter.

He stares at Wade, and waits, and stares, and waits until he understands what Wade’s not saying and his hand falls to his side.

“Your hut?”

It’s like Wade intentionally steps on Peter’s non-existent tail. “It’s a cottage,” he growls and Wade smiles, a barely-there upturn of lips, mostly gathered around his eyes. Peter sighs. “Fine. I’ll show you my house, after which you give me back my vest.”

Maybe like this, with nothing tying Wade to Peter, he’ll finally be able to move on, to put Peter in the past where he belongs. Doesn’t matter that Peter keeps that past into his present even now, and most probably in the future too. 

A king— _ their _king mustn’t have ties to such a low life as Peter.

Wade nods, and Peter leads the way, picking up his off-white shirt. He doesn’t shrug it on because it’s a warm day outside and he’s still wet. It takes them a bit of trekking up the gentle slope to get to Peter’s house, but they do get there, surprisingly without any quip from Wade.

He keeps glancing back, though, and he always sees a serene expression on the king’s face— except for the intensity in his eyes, which unfailingly and unrepentantly meet Peter’s.

Just when his house comes into view he slows down until he’s walking beside Wade. It’s easy to forget that he’s a king now and that Peter is his subject. Wade could have him imprisoned for the slight he did just now, but Wade doesn’t even seem to realize that he is a king himself. So that’s why it makes it easier for Peter to forget that aspect. That or their shared past.

“What’s with that look on your face?” Peter asks eventually, not standing the silence anymore. It’s so uncharacteristic of Wade that it makes Peter want to chatter his ear off, instead.

“I’m just recalling how much I enjoyed the view from behind,” he says, barely keeping the smile from splitting his face.

It startles a laugh from Peter, because it sounds like a sort of low-key payback from the time in the inn.

Ah. Better not stray too far down that pit. Not only a shared meal went down in that place.

“So this is my home,” he motions with his hand at the thatched roof, the closed wooden front door and only two windows, asymmetrically distant from each other. You could see the rusty-colored clay and faded brown wood girders traversing the facade both horizontally and vertically.

“You have a garden!” It’s what Wade almost screeches as if he’s never seen a garden.

Didn’t he?

The king doesn’t even wait for Peter to say something as he passes the reins to him and makes a beeline to the fence. It takes him a second to find the entrance on the other side and he’s gone.

Peter blinks at the excited king as he looks left and right and then crouches and touches the plants heavy with the fruit of Peter’s labor. He glances at the horse who snorts and leans down to graze the ankle high grass in front of his house. Ignored by both owner and horse, he loops the soft leather reins around one of the spikes in his fence and goes inside.

He might as well prepare some drinks now that the king seems to have made himself comfortable in Peter’s garden. Looking out of the only window that oversees the garden, he notices that Wade pulled Peter’s small chair to sit on and— is he talking to Peter’s plants?

He pinches the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. It’s not because he’s embarrassed on behalf of the king, but because if this continues he’s positive he’s going to say something stupid and damaging— to Wade’s role as a king and Peter’s sanity. He goes to his small kitchen to pull out two of the three copper mugs he has in his house and then uncovers the cherry juice one of the women in his life probably brought by when she came to check on his house.

There should be wine, too, but the juice jug is closer, so they’re having that.

“You’re gorgeous, y’know?” Wade’s murmured words reach Peter’s ears as soon as he exits the house through the back door that’s closest to the entrance in his garden. “Yes, you are. And you, too, Misses Tomatoes! Look how dainty your leaves are! And how beautiful you’re all coming into your color! And, oh shit biscuits! Mister Eggplant that’s such a generous belly you’re endowed with!”

Peter has to quickly place the mugs and the jug down on the rickety table under the awning where he keeps his gardening tools. His chest feels full to bursting and his throat hurts with the kind of anticipation that precedes a bubbling laughter.

“If you keep that up,” he says, turning around just to see a king who looks the happiest where he currently is giving Peter his undivided attention. Peter almost stutters. “All the plants in this garden will end up blushing red.”

“But they’re so beautiful!” Wade says, a whole repertoire of childish glee in his voice. “Janver would faint if he saw this little garden! He adores plants!” Something sharp lodges itself under Peter’s ribs even as Wade continues, “in fact, I picked the talking from him because he always talks to them as if they’re alive and can understand you.” A fond expression covers the glee. “His gardens have always been a thing of wonder.”

“Janver?” He doesn’t move from where he’s standing.

Wade nods, the fondness still there as he gazes down at the tomatoes. “The royal gardener. He was the only one I never played pranks on because he was the one who always seemed to understand me. Or knew how to listen to a kid who had everything but the most important thing: love and respect for another being. But I did have that. For him.”

Peter stares, and it takes him a while to realise that Wade’s not talking about his lover, but about a person who he admires. He picks the mugs and goes to give one to Wade.

“But I can see how much love you poured into this garden,” Wade says, cradling the mug between his hands. “Look at the plants, almost all bend down with the weight of their fruits, so fat I’m sure they’ll taste amazing. Like look at these tomatoes! They haven’t come fully into their blush, but damn, if I’m not tempted to take one and bite into it. I’m positive the juices will be delicious and even with the tang of bitterness, they’d still carry the sweetness that is to come once they fully mature.”

Peter has to swallow, his throat and mouth suddenly dry, and his cheeks warm enough that he’s afraid he might have come down with a fever. The wind is a bit chilly, and he’s still half naked.

Right. He forgot to put on his shirt.

This king is too distracting.

And obviously Wade picks that moment to gaze up and catch Peter looking at him as if he’s considering devouring him.

He takes a long sip to cover for that, to give his hands and mouth _ something _to do because he can feel the jitters, the restlessness pushing at his barriers, pulling at his control, his determination even as Wade stands up. He gazes back at the king from above the rim of his mug.

“Peter,” he murmurs, and just that word feels so heavy on Wade’s tongue, so full of emotion that Peter can’t mask the pain it causes him.

“Do you need more? There’s more juice there,” Peter says, throwing his thumb over his shoulder even if the jug sits on the table a little ways to his side and not behind him where the open entrance to the garden is. “I’ll bring it up here.”

But Wade takes hold of his wrist, and the grip is as tight as that night, warm and searing into his skin, but sans the scars.

“Peter.” He’s less soft now, the sharp edges growing and grazing Peter. “How long will you keep running away?”

He pulls Peter’s arm into his chest and Peter’s attention is on his mug, turning his hand so that it doesn’t slosh and stain the king’s deep red shirt. He has a black sash around his waist, keeping the shirt curly above the black leather pants. His katanas are missing, though, but Peter saw the peak of something sword-shaped on the saddle.

“I’m not running away,” he says, attention on his mug and hand, and not on the way the king tries to burn two holes into Peter’s face.

“You are. You’ve been running away from me ever since that night.”

He glances up. “I’m not. That night I put an end to this. I let you go.”

“You didn’t.”

Peter frowns. “I did. I told you.”

“Peter,” Wade says, a firm and quiet note in his voice. “Do you think I kept coming back just to give you your vest?”

“Isn’t that what you told me?”

The corner of Wade’s mouth quirks up into a half, knowing smile. Peter’s escape looks dimmer and dimmer.

“It’s easy to play dumb when you know fully well what that implies.”

Desperation surges like a howling wind and Peter wrenches his hand from Wade’s grip, making some of the juice spill on the king’s shirt before Peter loses hold of the mug and it falls to the ground.

“I don’t know, okay?” His voice breaks, raw and overused by emotion, but it’s okay. Let the king know the full extent of his pain. Maybe like that he’ll realise how foolish he is and he’ll go back to the palace. “I don’t know _ why _ you keep coming back here. Why you’re not on your horse riding back to your home. Why do you insist on _ hurting me so much!” _

Peter’s hands are pulling at his hair, bending to keep himself from falling. A dull thump sounds from his left, then nothing.

“Hurting you is the last thing I want to do,” Wade says, soft and broken like he’s the one on the brink of crying. “Baby boy, I—”

“No!” Peter lifts a warning finger, taking two steps back, his other hand still lodged into the damp curls at the base of his neck. “You don’t have _ the right to— no! _Don’t say—”

But he sees first, the surprise at Peter’s outburst, and then, horrifyingly, the determination, the set jaw. Wade will pull through this even if tears Peter apart again.

“I love you, Peter.”

“No, no!”

“I’ve loved you ever since we fought side by side in the woods.” 

“NO! Please don’t—”

“You _ are _my true love!” Wade says, firmly and like Peter won’t ever be able to change his mind on that.

It freezes Peter to the spot. Slowly, almost like an afterthought, his hands fall down to his sides, he straightens up, unable to tear his eyes away from the intensity in Wade’s gaze, the surety etched into the unblemished skin. How can he affirm such a thing? How can he tell Peter _ that _and expect it to not bury itself into Peter’s very soul and never let go?

“You’re lying,” Peter says, feebly, unable to tell if he’s going to collapse into a sobbing mess or wake up and realise it’s all been a dream.

“I’m not.”

“No.” He shakes his head and turns to gaze with unseeing eyes at his plants. “It’s not true. I can’t— you didn’t change that night. You—”

“Peter,” Wade commands, and it cuts Peter off but he still doesn’t dare meet the king’s gaze. “Look.” 

It takes Peter a while to do that, and when he does Wade’s hand is lifted and— the scars ripple across his skin once. Peter has to step closer and touch Wade’s hand to see that again, uncomprehending what is happening. He searches Wade’s face for answers, but instead he’s met with longing and love.

“It’s true,” Wade begins, Peter still cradling his hand between his, “I didn’t change. Not at first. Not even after you left. There wasn’t any light or any boom or any heart-stopping moment in which I knew. It came slowly, in increments. The kiss we shared that night didn’t turn me back because your love saw nothing that needed to be changed in my appearance.” 

Peter sucks in a breath, heart hammering in his chest, even as Wade curls his hand around Peter’s, probably sensing Peter’s instinct to pull away.

“You love the prince and the cursed one in equal measure.” Peter averts his eyes, unable to withstand this much honesty. He feels a hand caressing his cheek and he’s weak right now, he’s mesmerized by Wade’s soft voice because he leans into it, closing his eyes. “What your love did, instead, was to give me control over the curse. Over myself. You gave myself back to me, Peter, and for that alone I will be grateful and in your debt eternally.”

A weak smile pulls at his mouth, still not daring to open his eyes. But he feels the shift at his side, the warmth not only coming from the hand on his cheek or between his hands.

“But that’s only a small part of what I feel for you, baby boy.” Peter opens his eyes, startled by how close Wade’s voice sounds. “I love you,” he murmurs, “both like a best friend and like a lover would. I love you because when I look at you I’m overwhelmed with the desire to be the best version of myself and I can’t— I’m not able to let such a person go.” Then quiet, almost broken. "I'm not that strong."

There’s nothing to say to this and at the same time too much he needs to say. Something warm draws a path on his cheek and it’s not until Wade’s thumb moves to catch it that he realises he’s crying.

“Please,” Wade whispers, “please tell me you won’t run away anymore.”

“But you’re a king,” Peter croaks, voice thick with emotion.

“I’m a king _ because _of you,” he rectifies. “If you hadn’t come to bring me back, if you hadn’t fallen in love with me, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

“I can’t accept all the credit for that.” Peter’s head leans back, frowning slightly as sense returns to his head. “You’re a king. You’re _ the _king of this country. I’m— I’m nobody.”

“You’re the hero of this kingdom,” Wade counters. “You and your friends. Even the wizard with his meddling magic. But you, Peter, you’re worth more than I am with all my lineage behind me.”

“I’m not that perfect,” Peter argues, stepping back.

“You are to me.”

“You can’t put your own selfish desires before the needs of the kingdom.”

Wade sets his jaw again, and Peter knows that he’s not winning this argument. “I want you by my side, Peter. Besides, you seem to know more about what the kingdom needs than I do. Who better to keep me in line?” He flashes a grin.

“So that’s what all this talk’s been about,” Peter says, somehow managing to keep his voice steady even as he feels the playfulness filling him. 

Wade shrugs, going for a fake nonchalance. “This king is prone to wild, unking-ly thoughts. And you know him better than anyone else. You know how to keep him subdued.”

Peter lifts an eyebrow, unable to ignore the jolt of something decisively dark and smoldering shooting into the pit of his stomach. “That’s a dangerous subject you want to have at the court. He might start vying for the throne. Might even challenge you for it.”

Wade steps forward, bridging the distance Peter created between them. “Such an honorable subject,” he says, his voice pitching to that thrum that has goosebumps break on Peter’s skin; the fact that Wade bends down maintaining eye contact doesn’t help Peter. “Challenging the king instead of killing him in his sleep. Hard to come by such men these days.”

“Hard,” Peter says feebly, his breath mingling with Wade’s.

“So hard,” he whispers before his lips press against Peter’s.

They’re both unsure, at first, as if the kiss took them by surprise, but then Peter tilts his head just enough for him to exhale softly into the corner of Wade’s mouth and it sets the king into motion because he pulls Peter closer and deepens the kiss.

It feels like being pushed into a place he’s always wanted to be in, but too stubborn, too much in denial to take the steps towards it. Wade’s lips caress Peter in the most tender ways, as if he wants to taste him bit by bit, make the sensation last, before he dives in once again. And Peter clings to him, at first, then pulls at his shirt before one hand cards through Wade’s short hair and fists a handful, to the king’s delighted groan.

Wade’s hand, the one on Peter’s lower back, pushes down and they both gasp, which has the kiss break, but not the tight embrace they’re tangled in.

They take some time to calm down, Wade’s hands caressing Peter’s back as Peter leans into him.

Later, when they’re both satiated and sleeping the afternoon off, Peter wakes up to an empty side of the bed. He’s still not fully awake as he looks around for Wade. He only sees a bit of his back in the lower corner of the window before he’s pushed back by the horse’s head.

By the time Peter gets out, yawning wide enough to crack his jaw, dressed only in his brown pants, Wade’s staring at a familiar piece of clothing in his hands.

“This is yours,” he says, pushing the vest into Peter’s hands.

Peter blinks down at it, then up at a king who’s not meeting his eyes. He frowns. “I hope this is not goodbye.”

Wade’s wide eyes tell Peter exactly what he needs to know. For all the confidence Wade had for the both of them when he came, right now he sees the Wade in the woods, the one at the ruins. Vulnerable, insecure, tentative. No. They’re not having that conversation again. 

“Tomorrow my aunt and uncle will be coming by,” he starts, narrowed eyes daring Wade to get himself out of this, “and I’d like you to meet them.”

Wade opens his mouth more than once, trying sounds, but no full word gets out. Then, “you want me to meet your family?!”

Peter stares. “Of course. Why, you thought this Peter Parker didn’t come with a lot of package?” He crosses his arms, feeling miffed for some reason. He huffs. “You met Gwen, MJ and Harry, now prepare for Aunt May and Uncle Ben.”

It startles a genuine laugh from Wade, which has Peter’s own mouth pull into a smile, before Wade engulfs him into a bear hug and soundly kisses his temple.

“I love you, baby boy, I love you so much!” It is murmured with sentiment into the side of his face.

Peter can’t help hugging Wade tight, hands fisting into his shirt and burying his face into his neck just to breathe the king in.

“I know, I know. I hear you,” he croaks into his skin, sentiment crowding his words. “I’m never letting you go again.”

Wade chuckles into his hair, placing kisses as Peter keeps him as close to his heart as their bodies allow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been all, folks! I hope you enjoyed reading this long-ass fic as much as I enjoyed writing it! XD


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